And they chose to aid and abet a fugitive from the law with methods up to and including threatening violence. You pays your nickel and you takes your chances.
As far as the balance of power vs. the government being poor in the courtroom, it’s far worse on the battlefield.
And I’m not saying they didn’t fuck up. But if Weaver had gone along peacefully, no one would have died, and he would have had his day in court.
Yeah, the baby Vicki Weaver was holding in her arms when that murdering sack of shit Lon Horiuchi killed her was just aiding and abetting like a motherfucker.
Until the ATF got involved Weaver wasn’t part of any criminal activity. He might have been a racist or a religious crank or any of a bunch of things you don’t like, but show me where he was a criminal.
Again, I agree that the ATF were a bunch of fucktards. Trying to entrap someone into being a witness is the hallmark of idiotic law enforcement run amok. They must have been taking notes from the DEA or something.
But if Weaver had the sense to fight it out in court and public opinion, there would have been no siege, and no one would have died. When you drop to grabbing rifles and holing up in the face of LEO, events tend to take a predictable course.
In the Bundy case, I’m very glad that law enforcement didn’t continue to contribute to the siege mentality these people seem to have. They do need to work out a long-term solution to the problem, though. So far, cooler heads have prevailed.
Weaver and the US Marshalls negotiated a peaceful surrender. The US attorney associated with the case scuttled it.
The goalposts are over there, son. See where it says “The Feds were the weirdoes who started those disasters.”?
There were jet reconnaissance overflights and aerial photographic analysis to serve a warrant for failure to appear??? Who did the ATF think Weaver was E.T.? Gort? Tobor?
The court and ATF knew they had sent Weaver the wrong court date. Too bad.
The U.S. marshals had entered Weaver’s property and hid in the woods to observer Weaver, his family, and friend. They could have served the warrant at any time.
When the Weaver’s dog alerted to the marshal’s presence, they killed the dog. Then they killed Weaver’s son. Weaver’s friend responded by killing a U.S. marshal. The siege was on.
At the trial, the defense rested without calling a single witness. The feds never proved their case.
And all of those events happened months after he missed the court date he thought he had. Any fool knows you have a bench warrant after you miss a court date. The ATF brought trumped up charges against him, and he proceeded to escalate the situation. He had months where he could have walked off his land unarmed with his hands up, and chose not to do so. Even with his resistance, he was eventually arrested, with loss of life to no good end.
That the government had no case in the end proves the foolishness of the whole sad affair. It was retarded at its root, and he and the government escalated it until it was deadly. Were the ATF agents who attempted to entrap him in the wrong? Absolutely, and they were the root of the problem. However, I think that arming himself against them was the worst possible course Weaver could have taken, and he persisted at it for months.
So you do acknowledge that the National Parks have the properly legislated authority to charge admission? And that the BLM has the properly legislated authority to charge fees for grazing?
You seemed to be denying this, and it made you appear awfully FOTL.
So, you had no problems with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and the homeless population setting up large camps in parks and on public property? You’d have no issue with this: http://occupymadisoninc.com/ if the people building the houses just stuck them on any piece of public land they needed to? Maybe they need to put the tiny houses on trailers or use tents?
You have completely ignored that he and the US Marshalls negotiated a peaceful surrender that would have resulted in him turning himself in. * A deal that was promptly scuttled by the government attorney associated with the case. * There is no part of the Ruby Ridge incident where the Feds aren’t at fault.
No, I am aware of it: I don’t care that he didn’t have a deal to surrender. He could have given himself up for months with or without a deal. You seem to think that the Feds being fucktards keeps Weaver from joining them in that camp. It doesn’t. There aren’t any good guys in the situation.
Was he entrapped? Yes. The solution to that is to fight it in the legal system. Barricading up, arming yourself and refusing to go through the legal process isn’t a productive course of action for the innocent or the guilty, and I don’t feel obligated to give people who choose it any leeway. If they get out of the situation alive after they choose that course of action, they’ve come out ahead.
Weaver wasn’t a bad guy until the Feds set things in motion to make him one. You can keep trying to make it something else but the facts are what they are. If ATF had left him and his family the hell alone, they’d have been reclusive religious oddballs and nothing more. The Feds started it, the Feds complicated it, the Feds murdered two people, and then the Feds bought their way out of it. The end.
That’s insane. Weaver hurt nobody, was entrapped into using a hacksaw and didn’t act like an obedient serf. Hardly worth killing his family.
Allowing the justice system to work itself out isn’t acting like a serf, it’s acting like a citizen.
If you were present at the Weaver compound on say, April 1st of that year, and you were asked what the wisest course of action was, would you have honestly advised continuing to be holed up, and hope the Feds forget about it and go away?
I know that I would have advised him that his chances were better in a court than on a battlefield. Every strategic advantage is in his opponent’s favor, and his only hope outside of a court is to run, and the long odds are against even those who run.
He did reconsider the wisdom of what he was doing, but you already indicated that you don’t care about that.
Even if he did reconsider, how did he act on it? He had months to reconsider, and get his family and friends out of harm’s way. He didn’t.
Again, I don’t dispute the facts of the case, but I don’t see the great barrier Weaver had to turning himself in after he was obviously cornered. I don’t think he was a guilty of anything until he decided that arrest wasn’t a power that the Feds had. When you try to resist arrest and threaten violence for any attempt to arrest you, you’ve undoubtedly crossed that line, regardless of whether you are guilty or innocent of the original charge. Weaver did that in a big way, and refused to be arrested until people had died.
sigh There you go again.
He and the US Marshalls had a deal for him to surrender for arrest before anybody had been killed. A suit scuttled the deal and four people died.
I have not denied the BLM’s authority. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to clarifying my position.
I am baffled by your use of the acronym FOTL. 
None of the known uses seem to apply to my posts in this thread.
*FOTL - Fruit of the Loom (clothing company)
FOTL - Future of the Left (Welsh Band)
FOTL - Friends of Library
FOTL - Fat Of The Land (Prodigy music album)
FOTL - Forms of Old Testament Literature
FOTL - field operations team leader
FOTL - Follow On To Lance (Missile System)
FOTL - Firestarters of the Land (gaming clan)
FOTL - First Over the Line
FOTL - Friends of the Lake, Inc. (Bridgewater, CT; est. 2003)
FOTL - Freeman on the Land
FOTL - Fear of the Lord (Christian expression)
FOTL - Feet of the Lynx (gaming)
FOTL - Focus on Teaching and Learning (Loyola University Chicago; Chicago, IL)*
I’ll even add a few of my own.
FOTL - Fescue On Trinopus Land
FOTL - Fungus On Tortoise Leg
FOTL - Fun Owning Terrapins League