Now We Know Why the Dept of Education Bought Those Shotguns

15 months ago, on March 13, 2010, Fellowship of the Minds did a post on the curious discovery that the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) purchased 27 Remington Model 870 14″ shotguns. The delivery date was March 22, 2010.

This is what a Remington 870 shotgun looks like

Furthermore, the 27 new shotguns would join an already existing cache (“inventory”) of other DOE shotguns.

We posed the following questions:

1. How many shotguns does the DOE have in total?
2. What other weapons are in the DOE’s arsenal? and
3. Most importantly, why does the Dept of Education have this “inventory” of firearms in the first place?

Well, we now have the answer to question #3!

On June 7, 2011, at 6 in the morning, Kenneth Wright was woken by a banging on his front door of his home in Stockton, California. Wright looked out of his bedroom window and saw a SWAT team of 15 police officers. Dressed in his boxer shorts, Wright hurried downstairs and was about to open the front door when it was kicked open.

An officer grabbed him by the neck, dragged him out onto the front lawn, handcuffed him and put him in a police car with his three children, ages 3, 7, and 11. Wright was detained in the hot patrol car for 6 hours.

Kenneth Wright holding the police warrant in front of his home

Why?

The police were looking for Wright’s estranged wife to collect defaulted student loan payments. But the wife no longer lives in the home.

Stockton police said that the order to send in the SWAT team came from the U.S. Department of Education.

[Source: Daily Mail]

Welcome to the United Police States of Amerika!

H/t beloved fellow Tina.

P.S. The average college student graduates with $24,000 in debt, a 40% increase from 1997. There is currently $730 billion of outstanding student-loan debt, and the overwhelming majority of losses will be borne by the government, i.e., taxpayers, if it is not repaid. Only 40% of all student debt is being actively repaid.

~Eowyn