"Everything else should belong to the states," Pratt said. "But over the years, more and more power has been flowing to Washington and now you have more than 350 agencies at the federal level that are armed and can act like real cops. That is not the vision that George Washington and James Madison had."
Paul added, noting that federal agents were not armed and had no arrest powers until the early 1900s when prohibition and the federal income tax were imposed.
Paul says the disrespect of the federal law enforcement bureaucracy for basic freedoms, such as self-defense and property rights, is easily seen in the decision to deny commercial airline pilots the option to carry guns when they fly.
"Only government can regulate and provide the weapons for self-defense," he said, describing the philosophy. "So we deny the weapons going to the airline pilots at the same time we should recognize that four well-placed guns could have taken care of [the Sept. 11 hijackings]."
In effect, the federal government told the Airlines to neglect protecting their customers under the guise that government would protect the airlines' customers.
"What I want to do is fight terrorism. I don't want to just be moving organizational charts around," he said. [Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)]
Should have been doing more than moving charts around the years leading up to the9/11 terrorist attacks. A major problem is politicians and bureaucrats doing things like moving charts around that constitutes two-thirds of unnecessary and unconstitutional government micro-managing/usurpation..
"I think this is ridiculous," said Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) when FBI Director Robert Mueller refused to verify Biden's speculation about the plan prior to the announcement. "This is one of the reasons why there is this pale that, sort of hangs over the office, and this whole question about what we do about homeland defense."
The one third of government that is the legitimate government function to protect individual rights and private property rights from terrorism, wars, crime and fraud, Joseph Biden questions the necessity of.