Americans are being policed with military-grade weapons. This has to stop | Hank Johnson and Michael Shank

America’s main streets are a warzone. This should trouble every American, irrespective of their political leaning. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are near impossible to realize when our streets are policed so militarily. Our nation’s founders would be outraged, so as we commemorate the 250th anniversary this year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it’s worth evaluating how far off the mark we are in maintaining that much-vaunted freedom and liberty.

This past year, especially, witnessed a troubling militarization of the streets, with Donald Trump’s deployment of ICE and the national guard in multiple US cities, including Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. There is substantial documentation of immigration enforcement using military-grade equipment transferred from the Pentagon. And from Chicago to California, homeland security officers’ use of flash-bang grenades, predator drones, and armored personnel carriers is now commonplace. But to be clear, Americans were already seeing their streets militarized due to the Pentagon’s 1033 Program, which was created by Congress in the 1990s and provides war equipment free of charge to America’s police forces. This militarization of law enforcement is now a local, state and federal agency problem.

This Pentagon giveaway to domestic law enforcement, in addition to military-grade weaponry available through DHS’s terrorism grants and the US Coast Guard’s excess property program, has resulted in the transfer and delivery of billions of dollars’ worth of war equipment to the streets of the United States.

It’s become quite common, for example, to see Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles, known as MRAPs, all across America and in the smallest of towns, cities and counties. MRAPs used to be exclusive to warzones, as the US deployed thousands to Iraq, for example, and thousands more to Afghanistan. Now, they’re stateside.

Bringing them to US streets – along with other military hardware such as war planes, drones, and assault weapons, which are now in common use by domestic law enforcement – sends a chilling message to all Americans.

It establishes the idea that Americans are the enemy and that American main streets are the new battleground, something the White House has reaffirmed with the Trump administration claiming that there is an “enemy within”, reframing public protest and dissent as terrorism and a threat to national security.

As local governments are increasingly forced into coordination with federal armed forces – as in Washington DC – militarized presence in public spaces begins to make freedom of speech and protest feel all but impossible. When all that a government has is a military-grade hammer, the public quickly becomes the nail. The militarized presence increases the likelihood of violent interaction on our streets as blowback becomes inevitable.

There is another way. Our main streets don’t have to look like warzones. But it’s up to Congress to intervene and deescalate this increasingly combustible environment. It’s Congress that created this giveaway program, and it’s Congress that can take power back. And Americans will support it; in fact they’re hungry for it. The majority of America feels that democracy is under threat and see political violence as a major problem. And these MRAPs and assault weapons are merely adding more fuel to the political fire. If we want to preserve democratic freedoms, then demilitarization and de-escalation on our streets is a prerequisite.

Congress has the power to prevent the transfers of the military arsenal that’s least appropriate for local US policing – such as military weapons, long-range acoustic devices, grenade launchers, weaponized drones, armored military vehicles, and grenades or similar explosives. No police force needs this in a free America. Congress also has the power to prohibit the reselling of Pentagon equipment and prevent the further trafficking of existing weapons, a common occurrence across many police forces that makes our streets even more volatile.

Both of these actions would help de-escalate America’s main streets before they become more combustible. And all of this is possible with the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, which is being reintroduced in the House of Representatives. It’s past time Congress passed it.

Our nation’s founders recognized that overgrown military establishments, which our police forces are slowly becoming, are a threat to liberty and a free republic. They warned us about it then, and 250 years later, their warning is more relevant than ever. If we are to survive as a nation for another 250 years, demilitarization and de-escalation must be congressional priorities. Cooler heads can prevail in times of crisis, but not as long MRAPs are patrolling our public spaces. The enemy within is armed escalation, and we should be doing everything in our power to dismantle it.

• Rep Hank Johnson is a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee and the lead author of the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, which is being reintroduced in Congress this session. Dr Michael Shank is adjunct faculty at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution