What does it mean to be prepared? For Ken Ballew, a former military man and survivalist in suburban Montgomery County, Maryland, it meant possessing a stockpile of firearms and, according to the authorities, several live M-26 and M-61 hand grenades. On June 7, 1971, agents from the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division of the IRS—a conjunction of bureaucratic purviews that itself tells a story—converged on his home. They were not there for tax evasion. They were there for the explosives in his closet.
The raid feels like a artifact from a different strand of American anxiety. This was not the era of slick drug cartels or international terrorism as we now conceive it. This was a quieter, more eccentric brand of danger: the lone individual amassing military-grade weaponry for reasons opaque, perhaps tied to fears of societal collapse or government tyranny. The ATF’s very existence, bundling vices and violence under the umbrella of tax collection, speaks to a pragmatic, if peculiar, approach to domestic security. The Ballew case asks where the line is between a collector, a paranoid, and a threat. It questions what we fear in our neighbors, and what tools the state uses to manage those fears. It is a small, strange story of grenades nestled among civilian belongings, a literal explosive potential sitting quietly in a bedroom, waiting for a warrant to be served.