Citation

Goldman T. J. Firearms Public Policy 2000; 12(1).

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Second Amendment Foundation)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

More than 20 years ago, the Congress of the United States passed legislation that, in hindsight, ultimately set in motion a process directly leading to the horror of Waco, the tragedy of Ruby Ridge, the FBI Crime Lab fiasco, and the Keystone cops events of the Atlanta Olympic bombing episode. The process started, rather innocuously, as the result of a wildcat strike in New York City in the late 1960s by employees of the U.S. Postal Service. The factors precipitating the walkout were newspaper and television reports disclosing that a typical full-time New York City postal employee, with two children, was receiving less in salary than the sum of the benefits, subsidies, and cash paid to a similarly situated welfare family. The strike was settled when the federal government promised to review the pay scale of all federal employees.

The commission studying the federal employee pay scale, originally undertaken because of the postal strike, submitted its report to rectify the low salary structure.

As part of the increased salary structure, an unnoticed provision planted the seed for recent tragedies resulting from the loss of "institutional memory." Among those who received pay raises were the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Secret Service; Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; the Bureau of Narcotics (predecessor to the DEA); and other federal law enforcement units. The unnoticed provision in the new pay raise legislation mandated early retirement for federal law enforcement agents.

Where once maximum retirement was 70, the age was lowered to 55 years, while reducing the practical retirement age to only 50 years old. This effective "20 year loss of experience" was to be the most tragic consequence of that legislation. Though minimum retirement had always been 50, a few agents had always chosen to stay despite a generous pension and opportunities in private industry. Congressmen, many of whose ages considerably exceeded the newly instituted retirement age of 55, decimated the heart and soul from the collective wisdom and history of federal law enforcement. Unknown and unforeseen by those who mandated the new salary structure was the eventual unintended and ultimately tragic impact of that legislation.