Can someone please educate me about Waco and Ruby Ridge?

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The short barrelled shotgun in the randy weaver case ... wasn't. The po's measured from the muzzle to the shoulder and said 17.5", jail time. But measured from the end of the chamber to the muzzle it was legal. But he still got convicted on the weapons charge :fire:

atek3
 
Everyone seems to forget, like it or not, that the feds actions at Waco and probably Ruby Ridge created the tragedy of Oklahoma City.
I'm not making excuses for Tim McVeigh's actions, they were clearly wrong and he put innocent people to death.
However they are the unintended consequences of policies of the Reno Justice Dept. and the actions she sanctioned. Janet Reno created Tim McVeigh. Had the Waco fiasco not occurred, it is unlikely McVeigh would have had an excuse to do what he did. Of course evidence is starting to become exposed in OKC showing complicity on part of the feds in that event. But that's a rant for another time. :fire:
 
The whole Weaver incident was absolutely atrocious. The sniper that placed his scope on a mother holding a baby and shot her all because of a 1/2" of shotgun barrell should either be in prison or on death row in my opinion. I wouldn't care what my orders were, as a Christian, such an act is completely uncomprehensible.

Waco does appear to be a case of the Feds and Janet Reno wanting to make an example out of someone. Either that or they were grossly incompetent, or perhaps both. The Branch Davidians appear to have been selected because they were a kooky religious cult that were survivalists and had firearms. IF I wanted to sneak up on somebody I wouldn't do it in the middle of the morning driving a truck pulling a trailer full of Fed agents down a long dirt driveway visible from the house. While it does sound as if the state should have investigated them sooner for child abuse, the Federal raid was clearly botched and frankly appeared to be totally uncalled for. In the early days of the incident, I still remember the Feds were appearing on the news giving reasons for the raid, and then the next day on the news giving completely different reasons. The term "cover-up" certainly comes to mind. This is where Janet Reno earned her nickname here of "Burn-em and gas-em Reno".
 
I'm on board here that the feds f***ed up as much as anyone. But the "its only 1/2"" argument does nothing. 1/2", 1/8", 8". Its not a progressive crime. Regardless of anyone's views on whether or not it should be a crime or if he was trapped, its either too short or it isn't. And regardless of whether or not its too short, the fed response was irresponsibly and maliciously disproportionate.

Edit: Wanted to add that I don't really care if it was 8" of barrel cut off, semi-auto with more than 5 rounds with a pistol grip and a folding stock, the response was still way wrong.
 
Hey, Scott, how about not just you christians get to think morally? The rest of us humans outside of your club would like in on that.
 
Everyone seems to forget, like it or not, that the feds actions at Waco and probably Ruby Ridge created the tragedy of Oklahoma City.
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Isn't that the same as saying the US actions in Kuwait/Saudi created the tragedy of the World Trade Center?

People that want to commit a terrorist act, whether they are Americans or foreigners, will find some justification for their action. McVeigh was most likely going to do something eventually, whether or not Waco happened. His mindset was that of the radical "Turner Diary" individual that thought violence against the government was the only way to correct his perceived injustices.
 
To start with a side note - Judges do have the right to throw out a jury's decision, but I have no idea if he/she did in that particular case.

Ruby Ridge & Waco were examples of what happens when you have a shiny new hammer - most everything looks like a nail.

I think that law enforcement learned some valuable lessons from these 2 incidents. The first was that even they can be held accountable when they murder people with their under utilized assault weapons, and over inflated testosterone levels. We have too many LEO departments all competing for Federal funding, there are so damned many of them and they have little or nothing useful to do. We need to start combining these departments and get rid of all the conflicting interests.

It still makes me shudder to think that Lon Horiuchi and all the other killers have got an OJ pass on all those killings.

Perhaps one day justice will prevail for those dead kids.
 
shiny new hammer?

Was that hammer the picture of the tank with flames coming from the muzzle of the turret gun that no one can seem to find a picture of anywhere?
Hmmm...
C-
 
I wonder if law enforcement also learned not to allow long standoffs to avoid unintended consequences, as well as how effective fire is at eliminating evidence.


Y'know, people a little older than I talk about how they remember exactly what they were doing when JFK was shot. I know I'll never forget watching the flames and wondering whether the children would have prefered to be abused or to be burned to death. :fire:
 
I'll point out something that everyone here seems to forget.

The law in both cases stemmed from the NFA of 1934 - a TAX LAW! The alleged crimes were a violation of the tax code and no citizen should have a gun drawn on them for failure to pay a tax. There are simply too many reasonable alternatives. The feds could have sent them a bill, or withheld their income tax returns, or tacked additional fines onto their taxes until the matter was cleared up.

The alleged crimes were tantamount to smuggling cigarettes out of an Indian reservation or claiming an improper deduction on income taxes, no more.

Keith
 
Dark and deep

The Feds can't defend it and neither can the ones that get their info from The HISTORY CHANNEL !!

I have often wondered, can you see and breathe with your head there? In the sand, I mean...:)
 
You're right, Keith. But, you don't understand. When you've got all these agents and equipment then you must justify them come budget time. That means using them.


telewinz, I've never read the Turner Diaries. Nor do I care to do so from what I've heard of them. But tell me, how do the Turner Diaries or any felony that Randy Weaver committed...justify shooting his young son in the back...or his wife in the head? I mean, I understand that she was armed with a dangerous infant. Reckon the FBI was afraid she might abuse the baby? After all, that was the rationale for the final Waco assault.

And the feds have never shown the piles of illegal weapons. Nor have they shown evidence of child abuse. Oh, I suppose the children who died at Waco were the ones who were abused. They had to kill them to save them.
 
They had to kill them to save them.
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Seems to be an approved gov't policy since about the Vietnam era as I recall. Probably pre Vietnam, I just wasn't aware of it before then. It appears that the typical American response is akin to "As long as its not MY Ox being gored"...

Weaver did cut a barrel of a shotgun for someone... but as I recall reading at the time he kept it legal. Someone later might have (cough, cough) removed the buttstock pad, thus rendering the OAL to be 3/8" less than legal (cough, cough), but I digress... Then there was that slight faux pas concerning the court date... Oops. Then the boys dog thing.

Dynamics at work... not a pretty picture sometimes.

When the Feds want ya, they got ya... One way or another. We're all probably guilty of something, some more than others. And to be a fatalist, we're all going to die someday.

Koresh seemed determined to follow his self proclaimed destiny, albeit aided by his/our tax dollars. And the later trial wherein the judge over-ruled the jury... waste of still more taxpayer dough. Survivors will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, or what the judge says the law will be; the heck with 12 good men/women who obviously knew nothing about jury nullification.

Gerry Spence defended Weaver and wrote a little essay about it titled "From Freedom to Slavery". More focus on corporate King than Weaver but a good read none-the-less.

McVeigh... no hero there, tho' I still wonder about that conveniantly timed conference that the OKC ATF agents were at when the truck bomb went off and all the tin-foil hat crowd hoopla that followed.

Interesting times back then. Interesting times today.

So tell us Thefumigator, have you learned something about both incidents yet? And if so, what is your reaction 10 years after the fact?

Adios
 
They had to kill them to save them.
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But the operation was a success, Byron. That's the important part.

You can't make an omlette of the Constitution without breaking a few "undesirables" y'know.
 
The gov went way way over the line at Waco.

The agents on the perimeter fired at people trying to escape from the compound when it was on fire. They deny this, even though you can clearly see the muzzle flash on the circling aircraft's FLIR video. The FBI explains the 600 RPM flashes on the FLIR as sunlight reflecting off of pieces of metal. Great explanation, except that FLIR picks up heat. Anybody want to tell me how the sun suddenly heats up metal, and then cools it, at 600 RPM?

Shaped charges were used to blow holes into the bunkers that the kids were in. I'm not talking breaching charges. When you use a charge like that you turn the people inside into hamburger.

Waco was the biggest screw up in the history of law enforcement. And the only good thing that came of it is that many American's got very angry. Thereby preventing more grandiose stupidity.
 
...and if you believe all the B.S. on OKC, I've got a bridge in New York I will sell cheap. I have worked with professional explosive experts and they will all tell you there is no way that a truck with ANFO can destroy reinforced concrete collums at that distance. Besides, look at any pictures you can find, there are trees still standing with leaves still on them, near where the truck blew up.
More government lies.
 
On TFL there is a kick-butt thread about OKC and the improbability of a truck bomb doing the deed. It contains links to all sorts of things, though I think some are dead now since we moved the FreeConservatives board(where an identical argument was going and the two wound up entwined) to a different server but, still, it makes for good reading.

I will ask here a question that was asked in that thread: Why is there ALWAYS a Government Apologist anytime these incidents come up? Always...
 
To start with a side note - Judges do have the right to throw out a jury's decision
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Er, actually, I can't find any evidence of that, and it generally flies in the face of the point of having a jury in the first place.


Googling the term "judicial override" reveals a lot of discussion about judges over riding sentencing recommendations, and very little about judges over riding verdicts.

The two links that speak to judicial over ride of verdicts that I could find are here:

http://www.geocities.com/vladd77/JURYTRIAL_ENDAGERED.html

and

http://www.clr.org/jury-nullification-1.html


If judges can over ride verdicts at will, we are much deeper in it than we think, and the frog has boiled.
 
I will ask here a question that was asked in that thread: Why is there ALWAYS a Government Apologist anytime these incidents come up? Always...
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Honestly?

Because there's always an apologist on any side of a controversial issue like this.

Think about it - some mother somewhere offs her three kids, you get women's rights groups blaming it on stress and untreated depression.

You get a woman who kills her husband in self defense after years of abuse, while he was assaulting her, you get the people screaming for the death penalty.

You get a completely justifiable police shooting, there's always the guy running around screaming about jackbooted thugs.

You get an entirely questionable police shooting, there's always the people blindly supporting the cop, ignoring any evidence that shows it was unjustified.

It's just the nature of the world.

It doesn't matter what happens, there will be people advocating the 'wrong side' as far as the facts go (Disclaimer: II don't know enough about OKC to have an opinion on which is the wrong side there)
 
The feds wanted Weaver to spy on the White Supremacists_up the road

Weaver said what they did was not his business, so he told the feds no

The Feds then entrapped Weaver by having an undercover agent goad him into cutting down a shotgun at marked points

They wanted to use this as a lever to make Weaver into a spy

Weaver refused to "co-operate"

so they ratcheted up the pressure
 
(Disclaimer: II don't know enough about OKC to have an opinion on which is the wrong side there)
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286 Americans died at the hands of, apparently McVeigh and his minion, for WHATEVER reasons, real or imagined. 2 wrongs do NOT make a right, as the saying goes. Waco was real, don't get me wrong. Was it justification to do that deed?
280 million other Americans didn't think so as they did not feel compelled to rent a truck, buy fertilizer and diesel fuel, etc.

And you're right lexical...
It's just the nature of the world.
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Sad, but true.

Adios
 
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