Governors, Guns, And The Enemy Within (Op-Ed By Thomas Budds)

Image: 1-181 Field Artillery Regiment Armory at the Chattanooga National Guard campus on 1801 South Holtzclaw Avenue. Image Credit: tn.gov

Submitted by Thomas Budds –

I call on Governor Lee to take a break from spending billions of taxpayer money on electric Ford Trucks that nobody wants and a new football stadium that the Titans can afford by themselves and put on his national guard helmet on our behalf.

I ran the Asian Organized Crime Unit for the L.A. Sheriff’s Department for fifteen years also holding federal credentials. My team worked many cases with our counterparts in the FBI and U.S. Customs.

We knew that Chinese transnational crime groups needed weapons to pursue their ends, but Joe Biden’s open border has seriously broadened this armed threat to now include Chinese and Middle Easterner men of military age. We had a glimpse of how they may go about arming themselves many years ago.

In the mid 1990’s, two containers from China, destined for Mexico, were being off-loaded in the “International Free Trade Zone”, an area at ports of entry where cargo is placed for trans-shipment to other countries, according to their bills of laden.

We were told these Chinese containers were filled with military small arms and ammunition. That the “suspicious” bill-of-laden was to be processed by a, reportedly, dubious Chinese person running the “zone”. The information was passed to our customs counterpart who later told us that the containers exited the “zone” towards inland California, not towards the highway to Mexico. The obvious question arose, was China pre-positioning arms in the United States; we left the follow up with customs and the FBI to investigate.

Fast forward to today. There are many reports of Middle Eastern and Chinese men of military age and the many “got aways” entering the USA. Any true threat assessment being conducted today would have to address how the enemy might arm themselves after arrival.  Although we received no further information regarding China’s pre-positioning of arms, there is a more likely scenario that must be taken seriously, the vulnerability of our armories!

Every state has a National Guard with each unit housing military arms and equipment. Among the millions of invaders are known terrorists and others who are “welcomed” by big city and university compatriots; they disappear into our country to hatch their sinister plans.

I follow the news closely but have yet to see where military leaders and governors are addressing the security of our thousands of armories across the nation. I call on all governors to immediately launch security checks of our armories and renew background checks of those with the keys to the facilities. 

God’s intercession seems to be needed these days, so I suggest another day of prayer for the internal security of our nation.

About the Author: Thomas Budds is a Tennessee resident that writes from Murfreesboro.