A Different take on the Branch Davidian incident

Great Debates
1

I have seen the fact that a number of Branch Davidians were found with bullet wounds, including children, used as proof that they were planning the fire and that it was a mass-suicide situation.

I started thinking about it, and now I’m not so sure…I realized that if me and my family were trapped in a burning building, with no means of escape apparent, and I had a firearm I would probably use it to kill my loved ones, to save them from a painful death by burning.

Could that explain it? Well, definitely if they thought like I do, but I’m not sure how many people would think like I did…so here’s the hypothetical situation. If you and your family were trapped in a situation where an excruciatingly painful death was certain, would you think to kill them to save the suffering, and would you be able to go through with it?

2

Um… I thought it has something to do with all the snipers shooting into the building. But that might just be me. Serves 'em right – weapon dealers owning guns! A religion’s HQ taking the words of a 2000 year old book literally? Two birds with one stone if you ask me! :wink:

3

I dunno. I think in a panic situation like this it would be far more natural to attempt to survive at all costs than to sit down and rationally weigh probable suffering. In other words, it sounds like a good choice now, but I doubt it would be a likely option when the fewmets hit the windmill.

4

Several thoughts here:

When the fire started, it did so mainly in one area of the building before other spots appeared, set by the religious fanatics themselves. There was a period of time where people could have gotten out of some of the areas. The rapid spread of the fire indicated that the crack pots had stored flammables around to deliberately incinerate themselves.

You do not walk into American Territory, buy up a chunk of land and then tell the American Authorities to go to hell. You may not become a nation unto yourself on American lands. You may not declare war on American Authorities. Since these people were insane enough to follow the fanatical and distorted rule of their leader without using common sense, they faced whatever would happen from government intervention.

Being a weapons dealer is one thing. Being a Church minister and stockpiling weapons is another. I mean, come on! The crackpot was spoiling for a fight and made sure his people had arms enough to start a small war. His military preparation was quite good, except that he insisted on headquatering in a wooden building. Then he made sure that flammables were packed all around the place.

Most fanatics do not let their people leave when the end is coming down and in my opinion, a caring parent seeing walls of flame coming at him/her children would shoot them to prevent their suffering. Burning to death is one of the most horrible ways to go. I doubt if snipers deliberately shot the kids.

You live in the US, you abide by the laws. You have the right to attempt to change them by many means. Without laws anarchy reigns.

5

“Since these people were insane enough to follow the fanatical and distorted rule of their leader without using common sense, they faced whatever would happen from government intervention.”

Have I got this right? You break the US law, you get whatever the on-site Fed wants to do to you? Due process is suspended for those that follow a leader who is almost certainly insane?

That’s a pretty slippery slope you’re on.

6

No because my children would not have been there in the first place! To hell with whatever my misguided fucking principles are, my kids are more important! I would have sent my children out or they would have had to shoot me themselves to stop me. I would not let my children die for my cause. They should be allowed to live on and die for their own. But you cannot compare what a normal person would do with those squirrel nuts. No I wouldn’t shoot my children. I’d have gotten them out of there before it came to that.

Needs2know

7

Indeed. I used to room with a man whose wife and 2 daughters were abducted by a local cult. The younger girl was in “joint custody” and so he was allowed to see her every other weekend. He said, the only way to save a cult follower is to “kidnap, and deprogram.” But there is not any legal way for him to do that for his daughter.

Sometimes you need the A-team.

8

Ummm…

I think if there are stacks of ammo and you mix in fire the the ammo just kind of goes off by itself.

That is another possibility of why there were bullet holes in the crispy critters.

Of course those ATF agents who were serving a warrant have some bullet holes in them. (as do their ‘bullet proof’ vests) I guess their family members could have shot them.

9

I know I found it offensive that the ATF was portrayed as the Evil Minions of the Great Satanic US Government, when Koresh and his crew had a vile history already. You do not make yourself a Nation on US soil. Any basic Christian Religion knows that someone acting as Koresh did does not claim to be the reincarnation of Christ. Nor does any free religion have members walking around armed to keep other members in line.

I doubt if the ATF screwed the whole thing up like the media enjoys claiming and the few, still bonkers BDs left insist on stating. I mean, look at that cult of UFO followers who waited to be ‘taken to the Mothership.’ Each time the date came and passed, their leader changed the philosophy and the still believed him and he got more and more wacko as the years passed. Finally, he talked them all into suicide en-mass!

From what was determined after the fire, Koresh had flammables spread all over the place, which is not the most intelligent thing to do in a building of wood. He selected the rambling wooden structure as their last stand, again not the mark of a thinking person. Bullets go through wood. He had a pressurized gas tank next to the structure. Again, not a good idea when one plans on starting a war.

The way I see it, he had planned on taking those people with him the minute it became obvious that the government was not going to let him go.

Plus, very few of the people were allowed by him to escape before the worst hit, even the children.

When negotiations fail, when officers of the law have been killed doing their duty, what must be done next? Sit there for years and chat over tea while shipping him in supplies to make sure his people don’t starve while allowing his people to shoot any cops nearby?

It is a darn shame that kids got killed, but what does one do when the folks will not let them go to save them? Any parent worth his/her salt would have released the kids when the ATF gave them several opportunities to do so. Any parent worth his/her salt would have dumped the kids out when the BD guards started setting the place on fire also. Only fanatics would willingly have put up not only with Koresh’s deviate behavior but allowed their kids to burn in the fire without even shooting then to save them the pain.

10

Do you know for a fact that the ammunition goes off? Or, have you witnessed this in a movie or TV, again illustrating how entertainment dumbs down the general population? I don’t mean to be insulting, but…

Bullets are forced to leave a gun at high speed due to pressure that is formed inside the chamber after the gunpowder is ignited. Without a chamber, no pressure is generated. Without pressure, the bullet can’t go anywhere.

I’ve not personally witnessed what a bullet does in a fire, but my guess is that the casing just pops, and the bullet leaps with the force of a kernel of popcorn.

11

Maybe Khoresh did not expect the ATF to set fire to a building full of women and children, was hoping that negotiations might go better. Who knows for sure?

As to bullets going off due to fires, about 15 years ago (I can’t recall the exact year) there were some incidents where someone who worked at or had access to a factory where they made those molded fireplace logs out of sawdust and other flammables dropped .22 shells into the mix before it was shaped and solidified. Some of them went off in the fireplaces where they were burned. Nobody was hurt but I heard there was a danger, though not nearly as bad as if someone fired them from a gun - the force of the explosion would not be very focused, and would be divided between the slug and the cartridge, with the cartridge getting the most velocity, being lighter. It’s POSSIBLE that a few got shot into people, though not on the scale described, and the majority of them would have not hit living targets, unless people were clustered around the burning ammo boxes.

12

Well, in that situation it could be imagined that the molded log could provide adequate chamber-like focused pressure. But it is necessary for people to apply some logic: if you presume that the bullet itself could be made to fire and kill without the aid of a pistol, a person could buy some bullets (no waiting period or Brady Laws), and with the aid of a pair of pliers and a hammer, pick up the shells and hammer away… So, why all the hoopla about gun-laws? Go after the bullets instead.

13

Wrath,

You could fire a bullet using a pair of pliers and a hammer. But I wouldn’t recommend it. No barrel so your accuracy is going to be kind of bad. And the recoil is going to really suck, especially if you are holding the pliers that are gripping the bullet out in front of your face.

14

Brass casings do NOT have the strength to cause a bullet to fire. Wrath is correct. The casings might pop open, kind of like a firecracker. When not under pressure, the powder burns fast, but does not explode. So the primer explodes, the powder starts to burn, the bullet pops out the end and maybe the case bursts, and the rest of the powder burns up. end of story. no flashy pyrotechnics. None of your shrapnel embedded in the walls and bullets flying out the window incommoding the passersby.

15

Not many gun owners here are there? Or if so, none that were ‘brave’ enough (or stupid enough) to find out about bullets firing without benefit of a chamber.

Most will explode harmlessly if dropped into a fire, but I can pull the head off of a .22 with my fingers. Especially from cartridges which are cheaply made. Those will fire out of the brass. As a kid with more guts than brains, when camping, I did a few ‘experiments’ and hid behind a sand hill. Bullets dropped into a fire will shoot the round out rather often in odd directions.

See, most cartridges, after discharge, will drop out of the cylinder of a pistol. That indicates they did not expand much at all. Some do, which is why most revolvers have an ejector mechanism. A brass tube, with a slug loosely plugged in the end will act like a cannon with a ball dropped in it. The better the quality of the round, the firmer the fit of the slug, complete with some crimping of the brass lip into the lead. That gives a split second for the powder charge to build up more power before forcing the slug out. Those shells would probably explode.

Now, brass designed to be salvaged a reloaded is different because it is thicker. The rim, or opening of the cartridge is often not crimped but the slightly oversized slug force fitted into it. Especially reloads. Repeated crimping of the brass would damage the cartridge.

Plus, many high powered shells are formed like a two stage missile. Bigger in the base then smaller where the bullet is. The large base could allow pressure to build up and the extended neck let the slug blow out before the case ruptures.

Rimfire cartridges can easily be fired by hand, with pliers and something to strike it with. (Done it.) Especially if you grip the cartridge in the middle with the serrated jaws of the plier. A shotgun shell can be fired by striking the detonator cap in the center of the base while holding the brass part with something. The recoil there is savage though and you’d have to be standing within inches of your target to hit it.

Many shotgun shells are plastic, but made to be reloaded a few times. You can open the crimped shot chamber easily with the tip of a pocket knife. Many people who do a lot of shooting find it cheaper to buy reloads which are not sealed as tightly as the new rounds would be.

I don’t suggest experimentation. Especially with shotgun shells. I was lucky.

There is also the possibility that hundreds of brass rounds, stacked in ammo cases, one on top of the other, could, by weight alone and density, act like a restricting firing chamber and allow some slugs to fire off without blowing the casing apart.

I don’t figure Koresh always bought top of the line munitions.

16

Supporters of the feds say that David Koresh was a demented, child-molesting megalomaniac with a huge stash of weapons, and a lot of insane, apocalyptic visions, which made him extremely dangerous.

Koresh’s sympathizers say the feds were trigger-happy maniacs whose cruelty and stupidity caused a bloodbath.

I think that BOTH arguments are correct.

David Koresh WAS a nut, he WAS a child molestor, he WAS a wacko with an apocalyptic bent, and he WAS stockpiuling heavy weaponry. I don’t blame the feds for being concerned, and for wanting to shut down/disarm the Davidians at once.

But the way they went about it was unforgivably stupid. They staged an unnecessary daylight raid, with cameras present (those macho, glory-hounds were determined to get on “Cops” or “America’s Most Wanted”). They COULD have and SHOULD have arrested Koresh quietly and without fanfare. THAT would have kept the public safe and averted a bloodbath.

Instead, the feds did EVERYTHING wrong from start to finish, and created a pointless tragedy.

I don’t shed any tears for David Koresh… but it outrages me that NOBODY at the Justice Department has been held accountable for the fiasco they caused. Heads should have rolled in Washington, but that didn’t happen.

17

Yes, one of my uncles shot himself in the hand trying this trick. He was just a kid at the time, and he and a cousin tried to fire a bullet by putting it in a vise and hitting it with a screwdriver. In a display of absolute moronicness, they took turns hitting the bullet with the screwdriver while the other one stood in front of the bullet holding a piece of wood with a target drawn on it in front of his chest. Amazingly, they escaped serious injury, but they were nearly canidates for the Darwin awards. So lock up your bullets too, even if you think your kids can’t possibly be as dumb as my relatives!

18

The whole thing would most likely have been avoided if the government and just waited it out. What was the rush for? It’s not like they could hold up forever besides I heard some were thinking about leaving the compound near the end.

jmullaney last time I checked we have the right to bear arms and believe what we want, right or wrong.

19

Reboot42 wrote:

Last time I checked, “stockpiling” firearms and ammunition was not illegal.

20

Exactly. According to everything I’ve read and heard, every one of those weapons was owned legally. The gov’t just didn’t like somebody having a bunch of guns. Too bad it’s NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS, any more than it’s their business to regulate what books I’m able to read or who I’m able to talk to.

It’s all there in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, boys and girls. Everybody is really fond of saying “Yeah, but…” when it comes to rights they don’t think we should have, but there is no “yeah, but”. That document guarantees us that our rights will NOT be infringed.