(DCWatchdog.com) – Conservative tax activist Grover Norquist has declared that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is seeking to intimidate Americans, which is why it wants its agents to carry guns.
Norquist, a Republican, is the founder and leader of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative nonprofit that opposes tax increases.
His comments came after last week, a job posting by the Criminal Investigation section of the IRS said it was looking for applicants who would be “legally allowed to carry a firearm” and “be willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments.”
“The Marines, when they advertise for Marines, they don’t add, ‘And be ready to shoot people,’ and yet the IRS thought that was a good idea,” Norquist told the Newsmax program “Wake Up America” on Sunday.
The anti-taxation activist emphasized that President Joe Biden and Democrats claimed they wanted to hire more employees at the IRS to answer phone calls. Instead, they have boosted the budget of the tax authority by $80 billion by adopting last year’s Inflation Reduction Act but without carrying out any internal reforms.
“Talking about guns, the inspector general report on the IRS found that the IRS with those guns,” Norquist commented.
“They have 4,600 guns, pistols, rifles, shotguns, and five million rounds of ammunition. What five million people do they plan to shoot? That’s what they have now, before more money,” he added.
The president of Americans for Tax Reform stressed further that the IRS IG discovered that in more than 50% of the cases when an IRS agent’s gun went off, that was by mistake.
“They won’t tell you how many people were hurt or killed when those accidents happened,” Norquist said.
“It’s all redacted on the report. They’re not taking this seriously. They should not have sharp objects. They should not be increasing their spending along this line,” he added further.
The conservative activist pointed out that if hiring an extra 87,000 tax agents for the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act went through, the IRS would become the biggest agency of the US government.
“The Pentagon building that you’ve seen, the large one, has maybe 26,000 people in it. They want three times that many more IRS agents, and some of them will have guns,” Norquist declared.
“There have been scandals in the past we’ve heard [from] decades ago about them busting into people’s houses at five in the morning because some girlfriend or ex-employee decided to tell the IRS that ‘I know they’re cheating’ and people jump in with guns. They’re not taking this seriously,” elaborated the leader of “Americans for Tax Reform.”
IRS agents don't need to be armed, but the agency wants them to have guns so they can intimidate Americans, Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, told NEWSMAX on Sunday. https://t.co/r1QLTTqY46
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) April 30, 2023
