Maybe next time aim before you fire, fellas

There is something about guns that make us lose our damn minds.

I don’t think we love knives the same way. Or cannons. Or grenades. But as one social commentator pointed out: One particular political party’s response to the mass shooting of children at school is not moments of profound self-reflection or sadness, but pledging more guns.

That’s kind of like saying that the pain of DUI accidents would sure be eased by a nip of whiskey.

Sounds stupid in some other context, right?

But our fealty to guns makes us crazy.

Even the people we should trust to help provide the facts and temper our knee-jerk reactions were racing like the “Three Stooges” to see which could clobber the IRS fastest after it had the audacity not only to raid a gun store in Great Falls in May 2023, but not give out details because the investigation was ongoing.

The irony is so overwhelming it’s almost paralyzing: For most of Montana’s Congressional delegation crying about not getting responses is rich seeing how they’ve grown content to only answer the public or media’s questions when they consider it in their interest.

For a group of people who can’t seem to get enough guns, it was stunning how quickly those same people raced to try making it illegal for the IRS to carry — or even purchase — guns. The logic goes something like this: Arm teachers in elementary schools to make schools safer, but pull guns from the IRS.

A momentary scandal in Montana — Horror! A gun store getting raided —turned out to be a well-founded concern about a gun store owner who has been accused by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of skimming hundreds of thousands off the books without paying taxes or reporting the income.

The very notion of the federal government raiding a Montana gun store seemed to be Montana politicians’ worst nightmare come to life. And yet, if there’s any place a federal agent of any kind of law enforcement officer should be armed, it would seem to be at a gun-and-ammo store with an owner who has everything to lose.

It’s odd that our Congressional delegation seems fine with everyone else owning a gun, but gets worried when we start arming accountants. Some might even go so far as to call their response “weird.”

Last week, when the indictment against the Great Falls gun store owner was unsealed, what the rest of the world saw was a man accused of diverting hundreds of thousands from his business, while the rest of us are stuck paying taxes. If there’s a better use of IRS time and money, I haven’t seen it.

Politicians, namely Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Matt Rosendale got way, way out ahead of themselves, and now look foolish.

Daines pounded on the IRS:

Well, it turns out the IRS wanted those forms not to build a secret database to weaponize the government, as Daines implies, but rather because it had purchase data and information that helped the government figure out how much the owner is alleged to have bilked.

“These actions show the IRS isn’t going after wealthy tax cheats, they are going after main street businesses,” Daines said.

Yet, when the indictment was unsealed, the raid didn’t happen because the gun store was a part of Main Street America; it was an example of the IRS going after wealthy tax cheats — to use Sen. Daines’ own words.

Meanwhile from Rosendale:

So, as a reward for doing its job, according to Rosendale, he’ll support defunding IRS agent positions.

Not only is it embarrassing that some of Montana’s Congressional delegation rushed to judgment before having the facts, it’s no less galling that they happened to do it repeatedly and publicly.

Remember, though, that they are employees and leaders of the federal government. But they were outraged, even ready to defund the government, before they had the facts. Yet, I can’t imagine anyone would be happy if the IRS just let people walk away with hundreds of thousands just because the money came from gun sales.

In a day when voter and citizen distrust is still at a high, it’s doubly disappointing that the very leaders who should be a conduit of information about what the federal government is doing, are, instead, ginning up outrage against their federal colleagues.

There’s already a somewhat misplaced perception that nothing in the federal government works and it all needs to be privatized. But the incident in Great Falls shows just the opposite: The IRS made sure everyone, even gun store owners, pay their taxes.

I would expect an apology from Rosendale and Daines about as quickly as I expect they’ll reverse course and support funding for more IRS agents.

But if our own federal leaders demonstrate that Washington, D.C., is nothing more than a punching bag to take out misplaced frustrations, then prepare for more gridlock. And folks like Rosendale and Daines can only undercut the very institutions they’re a part of for so long before residents will jump to the same ill-informed opinions about them.

But I get it: The rush to judgment sounds so much better when you say you’re defending the Second Amendment rather than you’re defending an alleged tax cheat.

Maybe next time, let’s not use the ready-fire-aim approach.