Sanabel wrote:Velahor, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on Waco and/or Ruby Ridge
I thoroughly believe that people should be allowed to form isolated communities, believe in backwards religions, and hold hateful beliefs as long as they do it peacefully. These two instances are tricky, because they were participating in illegal activities but met with excessive force.
Waco was a mass slaughter of innocent civilians under the guise of saving them from a few legitimate criminals in the Branch Davidian compound. Excessive force, plain and simple. There was physical and sexual abuse of children going on, so obviously action did needed to be taken against the individuals committing those crimes, but it was so poorly executed, because the approach taken was not to preserve the lives of those in the compound, but to treat them as enemy combatants. It's a more muddy one than Ruby Ridge though, because of the crimes involved.
As far as Ruby Ridge goes, the Feds messed up again, but also, Weaver didn't do anything that should be illegal, as his weapons charge is in violation of natural human rights in my opinion. Randy Weaver wasn't a dangerous white supremacist, just poor delusional fool who thought the world was ending when he left Iowa for Idaho. He took his family out to the same place that everyone who thinks the world is ending goes, and that is a place that includes a lot of white supremacists. He became somewhat radicalized by nature of associating with these people, but wasn't any more of a threat than the rest of the guys who live out there in the northern Rockies doing the same thing. The charge he was to be arrested on was selling a sawed off shotgun without a license, the state met him with a small army. The FBI, Marshals, and ATF acted on misinformation with an unreasonable amount of force and proved him right that the world was ending, at least in his mind. Obviously, if the feds are shooting at a building with children in it, they didn't thoroughly investigate the situation. In the end, the feds killed an innocent civilian who wasn't actively posing a threat to anyone, trying to pick up a guy on a minor gun violation.
In both situations, I think the federal criminal bureaus were trying to make a statement to far-righters that they wouldn't be tolerated, and used real criminal accusations to show brutal military force. They wanted to intimidate what they mistakenly saw as a rise in far-right terrorist organizations, and ended up instead slaughtering American citizens, mostly children and mothers.
To use an analogy, Waco is the equivalent someone hitting a pedestrian with a car, but instead of towing the car and arresting the driver, the police run it over with a bulldozer, with the driver and their whole family in it. Ruby Ridge was like getting pulled over for a speeding ticket, and then the cop reaches in the car and shoots your dog because it growled. Both are obvious instances of excessive force even though the accused that were to be arrested were likely guilty of their crimes.
From a legal standpoint, it was excessive force, and those killed without trials, including mothers and children, were punished as criminals by the federal government without due process. These people were acting within their 2A rights possessing the weapons that they had, but they forfeited those rights by committing crimes unrelated to their dissent against the government.
I'm glad the Feds changed their tactics with these groups, to kill less innocent people trying to get to these small-time cult leaders and white supremacists.
To sum it up:
Waco required government action, but they acted improperly and killed the people they were supposed to be saving.
Ruby Ridge did not require government action, and would have been avoided if not for an unjust and unnecessary gun law that the Feds decided to enforce with a small army.
Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2020 7:59 pm
