Posted on 01/27/2016 5:55:49 AM PST by xzins
Four days after taking the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, LaVoy Finicum, a 55-year-old Arizona rancher told NBC News that he'd rather die than spend his days in prison.
"There are things more important than your life and freedom is one of them," he said in early January as he sat huddled in a blue tarp outside of the wildlife refuge keeping watch with his gun in his lap. "I'm prepared to defend freedom."
Finicum told NBC that night that he was staying outside to ensure that the FBI could find him if they came to arrest him.
Finicum was shot and killed Tuesday night when law enforcement stopped two cars carrying standoff leaders on their way from the refuge to a meeting in Grant County. Ryan Bundy, another militiaman, was shot and transported to the hospital, but did not suffer any life-threatening injuries, according to The Oregonian.
Before Finicum's death was even confirmed, supporters rushed to portray him on social media as a martyr who, according to unverified accounts, had his hands up and was unarmed when he was shot. Law enforcement sources told CNN that Finicum and Ryan Bundy were the only two leaders who did not surrender during the confrontation.
Finicum had taken a strong interest in land disputes with the federal government after he stood at Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's side during his confrontation with the Bureau of Land Management in 2014. After returning home to Arizona, Finicum – a Mormon father with 11 children– made a decision. He was no longer going to write a check to the federal government for his grazing fees.
At the refuge, Finicum became a spokesman for the militiamen, fielding questions from press and helping plan events like one Saturday where ranchers were invited to come to the commandeered refuge to sign "declarations of emancipation" from the federal government, documents asserting they would no longer pay grazing fees. According to the Oregonian, Finicum had incurred about $12,000 in fees with the BLM.
In a video posting just hours before his death, Finicum described why the militiamen were still holding onto the refuge after more than three weeks and after local officials and community members had asked them to go. Finicum said that the occupation was intended to push back on the federal government's overreach.
"They do not want to let go of this," Finicum said. "They do not intend on loosing here and we do not intend on giving it back to them."
But Finicum's participation in the standoff had taken a toll. Back home in Arizona, child services had removed four foster children from his family's care, a move Finicum characterized as retribution. Oregon Public Broadcasting had reported that Finicum made most of his income from fostering.
Before Oregon, Finicum kept a website One Cowboy's Stand For Freedom where he documented his beliefs, his family and his ranch.
Finicum writes on the website that "he has drawn a line in the sand and that line is the Constitution in its original intent."
He also had written a cowboy thriller about the chaos of the American West after an electromagnetic pulse collapses the country's infrastructure called "Only By Blood and Suffering." The novel traced a family as each grown child navigated the new world and fights back against the overreach of the federal government.
We are losing our country, fruser.
They could have taken the Waco citizens peacefully if they had wanted to.
And they could have waited this out and done it peacefully, too.
There was absolutely nobody harmed by them. They were talking and meeting. Send them a bill someday for rent for their use of a firefighter’s shack (the infamous ‘federal building seized’).
Wait and it will go away.
This was totally unnecessary and that makes it murder by forced act.
Kinda like what the gov’t did to the remains from Extortion 17?
That’s what Ammon Bundy claimed. It will be interesting to find out if there was any exchange of gunfire.
Suggest you see new post “Militant Shot and Killed While Charging Police, Driver Says. (Finally an eyewitness account)”
“There’s a reason western states never took over big swaths of land - no one wanted it.”
I’ve often wondered if this should be re-visited, now that ranching has somewhat modernized. These ranchers are paying grazing fees, and successfully raising cattle...so it seems that given a large enough tract of land, homesteading is possible.
It seems that many of these ranchers have already fulfilled the requirements of the 19th century land claims: improve the land and make it productive. Shouldn’t the goal be to liquidate as much federal land as possible, to the ranchers who are already using it, and have the land enter the local tax rolls.
I know the federal government would have no interest in this...but it seems logical to privatize as much land as possible.
This article didn’t mention it was Bundy. It wouldn’t surprise me, since he survived. And, Bundy was very honest at his own ranch standoff.
Now, if the officers were operating according to new standards, then they were wearing cameras.
Wonder if they were?
He was being paid to take care of them. He left town. He wasn't doing the work he was being paid to do.
And you think they were left alone?
Enjoy Solitary. Terrorists all.
Nope, he had close to a dozen other kids of various ages. Not sure how many wives he might have had. But if you take a job for pay, you should do the work. And he wasn’t.
I agreed with every line except that the last line may be “murder by buracracy”.
This is the prob w/having a gazillion b.s. laws on the books and gov overreach.
Eventually it gets enforced and sometimes folks get killed in the process.
Which is why the ranchers were armed to begin with.
This time it happened when they tried to arrest this group of guys on the way to the “town hall meeting”.
The eco Nazi angle here is serious too. The land is protected because eco Nazis believe nature is more important than people. When they actually get laws on the books and those laws are a big detriment to people’s livelihood, they get upset - the ranchers.
When the ranchers protest, the eco Nazi (Oregon governor) picks up the phone and calls in the old enforcement to enforce that law.
Just like that b*tch saying “We need some muscle over here!”
“Killed While Charging Police”
I don’t know but this is doubtful. The Oregonian posted this story indicating someone on facebook said this, who also claimed to be driving the car.
Now, as I understand it, the driver would’ve been arrested and probably not given the luxury of posting on facebook.
So I don’t believe that one without further corroboration.
They have something like a third to a half of the US locked up as ‘federal land’.
If they would open that up to people as they are supposed to, can you imagine in the olden days offering 40 acres and a plow to those who would settle it.
I’d take that over food stamps any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
“If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.†-Samuel Adams
Just as there were traitorous wretches among the occupation in Oregon, there are traitorous wretches among us.
So, you are saying he had a wife there. And you’re saying that child services would give a foster kid to a man and not also include the wife?
There appears to be a great many government trolls on FR. To that asshat that says “finally an eyewitness” ... there were only Feds and Bundys group there. Bundy already said ... as an eyewitness ... that Finicum was shot three times when he had his hands up and surrendering ... essentially he was assassinated. Now who are you going to believe Bundy or the Feds. IMO anyone believing the Feds after Ruby Ridge Waco1 and Biker Waco is either an asshat or a government agent troll.
http://libertynews.com/2016/01/gut-wrenching-eye-witness-claims-in-detailed-interview-that-oregonstandoff-protestor-robert-lavoy-finicum-was-executed-by-fbi-video/ere is an eyewitness account.
OR, he was told to go on facebook and put in his “version” of what happened, without being coerced of course, providing an alternate story.
Doubtful, but with this gov’t, you never know.
The one claiming he was charging before shot also
“claims to be the driver of one of two vehicles involved in the highway shooting.”
Wouldn’t driver be under arrest? Doubt this story.
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/01/militant_shot_and_killed_while.html
And the press statement by the police makes no indication of anyone charging:
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/01/5_arrested_1_dead_in_connectio.html
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