Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has acted wisely in telling FBI Director Christopher Wray that he has some explaining to do, but the chairman should slightly broaden his inquiry.

Graham sent a Jan. 30 letter to Wray demanding a “briefing” to the committee about why the Bureau used such apparently disproportionate force in its pre-dawn raid on longtime political consultant Roger Stone, who stands accused of perjury by special counsel Robert Mueller. Graham’s specific questions of Wray are good, but they seem focused too heavily on the Stone arrest alone. The bigger questions should be about FBI arrest methods more broadly.

Some of us thought the Stone arrest methods were abusive, but they weren’t unique. The FBI used similar tactics on Stone’s former business partner, Paul Manafort, and they and their Drug Enforcement Agency brethren use such raids dozens of times each year not just on people thought to be violent but on low-level offenders and on doctors suspected of overprescribing painkillers.

When such heavily armed force is used, innocents get terrorized and hurt. Wives of suspects, in their nightgowns, awake to find semiautomatic weapons in their faces; an elderly orchard hobbyist watches his furniture smashed while agents look for evidence of flower “smuggling”; doors at wrong addresses get chain-sawed open; children get injured by flash grenades or even killed by clumsy agents.

No matter what some FBI defenders might say, most people suspected of low-level crimes such as perjury are not likely to try to shoot their way out of an arrest. Four or six agents with holstered pistols, not 29 heavily armed agents in full riot gear, should be perfectly able to take Roger Stone into custody.

Graham is surely right to question Wray about the raid on Stone’s house, but question 2 in his letter to the FBI chief is the one that is the most relevant, and that should be expanded: “Was the manner of Stone’s arrest consistent with the arrests of, and procedures for the arrests of, similarly charged individuals?”

The further questions should be: What factors determine how many agents are used? What determines how heavily armed they should be? What criteria govern how much time should be allotted before doors are broken down? Or how rough the agents are to the suspect once inside? Or how careful they are to use the least disruptive means of searching the house for evidence?

What data, if any, supports the use of riot gear for suspects never known to be violent? How many times have suspects or, worse, innocent bystanders or people subject to mistaken identity, been injured or killed in heavily armed raids? And how often, conversely, have FBI agents been injured or killed, and under what circumstances? Have agents been badly injured or killed by white-collar suspects with no record of violence, and did any neutral analysis determine that the agent’s injury or death would have been avoided if the Bureau had made a greater show of force?

In other words, if there is objective justification for heavy use of force — real evidence that it does more good than the downside risks it carries, rather than just a macho sense that efficacy and safety are bolstered by “overwhelming presence” — then let’s see it. Maybe there is. If so, it should not be difficult for Wray to produce.

Despite what some might say, these concerns amount to substantially more than mere “pearl clutching.” We live in a nation founded on the idea of maximum liberty under law, of limited government, and of protections against state overuse of force. We wisely exclude the military from domestic law enforcement, and we at least look with suspicion at turning domestic law enforcement into a quasi-military function.

Yet not only with the Stone arrest, but all too often, we see federal agents who are overarmed and for no good reason, and who act abusively toward citizens they are supposed to protect. The difference this time was that the raid was televised for all the world to see. It led several conservative, pro-law-enforcement people I know — including those who dislike Stone, Manafort, and Trump — to use expressions like “jackboots” and “thugs” in conversations when they offered their impressions of the Stone raid.

One can fully support Mueller’s investigation and think the Trumpist effusions about a “deep state” are overblown nonsense and yet still see that the FBI’s conduct with regard to Trump and Hillary Clinton has been unprofessional and tawdry enough to suggest the bureau needs a thorough housecleaning. The housecleaning should begin with the examination of rules concerning use of force, in the “briefing” Graham is holding with such appropriate dispatch.