It appears that after almost a month, it will all be over.
A group of armed men seized control of a wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon and demanded the U.S. government transfer control to the local government and release two ranchers convicted of arson.
Sentenced under mandatory minimums from anti-terrorism laws from the 1990s, the leaders of the standoff were finally arrested.
After having absolute freedom to come and go from the refuge as they pleased, the leaders were finally taken into custody after being stopped at a roadblock on their way to another community meeting.
Reports are still conflicting, but it appears one of the members of the group was shot and killed by law enforcement officers, either when charging at them or after attempting to surrender.
Many similar altercations involving the deaths of young black men have been scattered through the American mass media, raising contraversy in political landscapes.
While there is some merit to the group’s complaints about the mandatory minimum sentences, those facts are all obscured by the use of armed force and threats.
They have no legal standing to occupy the reserve, only the threat to shoot any law enforcement officer that attempts to remove them from their occupation.
Legally, it’s armed sedition: an attempt to disrupt the workings of the U.S. government using force.
The group attempted to create their own legal system under a misunderstanding of common law, where a grand jury would meet in secret and any media attempting to ask them questions would be guilty of “the crime of felony,” a thing that does not exist in any legal code except the one in their heads.
The ironic thing about why it took so long for arrests to be made we think may have a lot to do with these people being white Christians.
The government is justifiably skittish on taking a firm stand against the occupiers as memories of Waco and Ruby Ridge are still fresh in many people’s minds, but for allowing such impunity to flaunt the laws of the nation to go on as long as they did will only embolden others with extreme positions to attempt the same thing.
If they were any other race or religion, they would’ve been branded as terrorists and shot by the National Guard long ago.
Very few of the members are from Oregon, let alone the local community.
Most are from out of state and their leader is the son of extreme antigovernment hero and national scofflaw Cliven Bundy who still owes American taxpayers over one million dollars in grazing fees for using federal grazing land for his cattle.
Everyone from the local community, from the sheriff who is the only authority they claim to recognize to the Paiute Indians whose land the reserve actually belongs to, have all asked them to leave, several times, only to be told rather condescendingly that the residents still need to stand up for their rights, but only as the occupiers see them.