Federal agencies cut gun and ammo spending outside Homeland Security, OpenTheBooks finds 1.4 billion dollars across 70 offices since 2024, IRS and SBA sidearms shrink while ICE tactical spending rises almost fourfold

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zerohedge.com

For two decades, American administrative agencies with no obvious law-enforcement mandate — the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, the Small Business Administration — quietly accumulated firearms, ammunition and military-style equipment, spending that OpenTheBooks has tracked since its first tallies and updated most recently in 2023. Now the pencil pushers are disarming, at least partially.

The watchdog reviewed almost 70 federal offices that purchased such equipment between fiscal years 2024 and 2026, documenting $1.4 billion in combined spending. The detail is in the composition. In comparable October-through-August periods, non-military agencies spent $228 million in fiscal 2024 and $278 million in fiscal 2025 — but fiscal 2026 spending through August already stands at $531 million, driven almost entirely by the Department of Homeland Security.

Within DHS, spending on guns and ammunition rose almost 236 percent year over year, from $60.8 million to $204.4 million. ICE alone spent $57.2 million on guns, ammo, explosives, armor and tactical equipment in fiscal 2026, against $15 million and $14.4 million in the two prior years — a nearly fourfold increase. The Coast Guard's jump is mostly two Teledyne contracts worth a combined $61.9 million for night-vision sensors on its helicopters.

Outside DHS, the picture reverses. The agencies that made the original scandal — armed auditors and benefits administrators — show signs of a drawdown. The Department of Energy, which spent around $1.5 million in each of fiscal 2024 and 2025 on ammunition, grenades, armor and night vision, put $40 million into unmanned aircraft for its nuclear security administration but cut back on the small stuff. Labor, Energy and the EPA posted increases; the broader administrative apparatus did not.

The pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched how institutions behave under scrutiny. Bureaucratic armament grew for twenty years because the money was someone else's and nobody counted the sidearms. The moment procurement gets counted line by line, the pistols are the first item to go — while the agencies with an actual enforcement mission absorb the rest.