Free Republic

The Trump administration is preparing to restore the flow of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies under a program that had been sharply curtailed amid an outcry over police use of armored vehicles and other war-fighting gear to confront protesters. Documents obtained by The Associated Press indicate President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order undoing an Obama administration directive that restricted police agencies’ access to the gear that includes grenade launchers, bullet-proof vests, riot shields, firearms and ammunition. Trump’s order would fully restore the program under which “assets that would otherwise be scrapped can be repurposed...

I suppose this was entirely predictable given the stance of the Obama administration in most matters concerning relations between police departments and the communities they serve and protect. The White House is cancelling portions of a program where surplus military equipment was made available at no cost to local police departments for use in fighting crime in violent neighborhoods. Other resources will remain available but require some sort of assurances from the cops that they won’t “misuse” them. The Obama administration announced Monday it will ban federal transfers of certain types of military-style gear from local police departments, as...

You can't put a price tag on surviving a deadly attack overseas, but one Fort Hood soldier knows the cost of the helmet that saved his life all too well. "I had a couple shrapnels in my side plates and in my helmet," Army Sergeant Michael Williams said about the gear that protected him on June 13, 2011. Now, more than two years after the day he was wounded by an improvised explosive device in Iraq, he got a "bill" for his shrapnel-pierced helmet. "I automatically assumed that, you know, that's the gear that I got blown up in, that...

Going once, going twice, SOLD to the highest bidder: Military-issue items including body armor, combat helmets and gas masks. Apparently you really can buy anything on the Internet. A simple search for “military” on the online auction site eBay turned up such items for sale as Meals, Ready-To-Eat, Kevlar helmets, military communication radios, body armor and a gas mask complete with carrying case, decontamination kit and chemical protective suit. One Kevlar helmet hawker offered this selling point: “You may have never gone to war, but this bad boy has. It is a true war hero too. “It has a [camouflage]...