The troubled Environmental Protection Agency has a lot of problems, but according to Adam Andrzejewski of Open the Books, a lack of military-style weapons for the agency’s 200 environmental law enforcement agents isn’t among them. The Washington Times reports on Andrzejewski’s findings of how the agency has spent millions of dollars over the past decade in arming its special agents:

Among the weapons purchased are guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities, according to a new report by the watchdog group Open the Books.

“Protecting the environment just got real. With millions of dollars spent on military style weaponry, the EPA is now literally ensconced with all institutional force,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder of Open the Books and the author of the report.

“Our report discovered that when the EPA comes knocking they are armed with a thousand lawyers, arrest/criminal data, credit, business and property histories, plus a ‘Special Agent’ with the latest in weaponry and technology,” Mr. Andrzejewski added.

Stephen Moore, writing in Investor’s Business Daily, provides a list of some of the Environmental Protection Agency’s more unusual expenditures for armaments, which includes the following:

• $1.4 million for “guns up to 300mm”
• $380,000 for “ammunition”
• $31,000 for “armament training devices”
• $42,000 for “special ammunition”

The “guns up to 300mm” specification caught our attention because the caliber of ammunition for such a weapon would be nearly 12 inches in diameter. To get a sense of what such a gun would look like, we searched and found a picture of a gun that size:

According to the accompanying specifications, the 300 mm Type 7 Short Howitzer captured by U.S. troops from Japanese forces in the Philippines was capable of firing a 300 mm caliber projectile out to a range of nearly 7.4 miles.

We next searched and found a picture of the kind of ammunition that might be used in such a weapon in today’s world. Here is what a modern 300 mm mortar shell looks like:

And here is a video of how one such 300 mm mortar shell was loaded and fired by Free Syrian Army rebels in 2014 (via Military.com):

https://youtu.be/9O6dTEcQEIc

Clearly, the use of such a weapon is not good for the environment….

Meanwhile, we should note that, like the Environmental Protection Agency’s special agents, the FSA rebels have also been funded and trained by the U.S. government.

One wonders just how the EPA’s special agents would use that size weapon to enforce the nation’s environmental protection laws. Someone at the EPA really needs to explain why it would ever need that kind of firepower to justify using that particular specification on its gun purchase requisitions.