It’s No Joke: Depart. of Defense Authorizes Killing Americans by Robert Socha

On September 27, 2024, the U.S. Department of Defense reissued DoD Directive 5240.01. Researchgate.net explains that this reissue expands the DoD’s authority to assist in domestic situations with the use of lethal force!

Under section 3.3, is the following level of authority (italics mine):

“(c) Assistance in responding with assets with potential for lethality, or any situation in which it is reasonably foreseeable that providing the requested assistance may involve the use of force that is likely to result in lethal force, including death or serious bodily injury. It also includes all support to civilian law enforcement officials in situations where a confrontation between civilian law enforcement and civilian individuals or groups is reasonably anticipated. Such use of force must be in accordance with DoD Directive 5210.56, potentially as further restricted based on the specifics of the requested support.”

I learned of this through a post by @Holden_Culotta on the platform formally known as Twitter, x.com. His post quotes Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams, stating the following:

Ron Paul warns us that the U.S. military was just “authorized to kill Americans on U.S. soil…I think it’s very, very dangerous.”

Daniel McAdams: “It’s not a law, it’s a DoD Directive. So, this is the administrative state, where they take over, they don’t pass laws. It’s a DoD Directive that was reissued September 27, 2024. It governs the Department of Defense intelligence activities, and now includes provisions authorizing lethal force in certain circumstances, and it supplants the 2016 version which did not mention that.”

It is particularly alarming, as Mr. McAdams points out, that a directive implemented by unelected bureaucrats gives the U.S. Military authorization to use lethal force on United States soil against her citizens. The Third and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution protect from such unethical use of these military powers. I, for one, do not feel secure in my person knowing the military can be called upon to assist during domestic situations. The states have their Guards and can request assistance as needed, but not assistance that includes lethal force. This amended directive set a dangerous precedent when future social media or peaceful and patriotic exercising the freedom of assembly provoke a particularly threatened federal entity to exploit the directive’s provisions, just as the current installed administration has exploited the DOJ to harass and imprison their political rivals.

I am tired of unelected bureaucratic machines implementing directives, creating policies that bypass the legislative process, and enforcing them as law while the Legislature itself sits idly by allowing the usurpation of their lawmaking power to unabatedly continue. Hopefully, the Supreme Court’s repeal of the Chevron decision will give our legislators the wherewithal to rescind this egregious overreach of the administrative state and return some comfort to us that some future administration or domestic event will not lay the groundwork to use the military we rely on to provide for the common defense as a weapon against Americans in the name of ensuring domestic tranquility.