I was in the Army and I am pretty familiar with ambushes. This was not an ambush designed to kill - it was plan to arrest people away from the public (and away from the guy in the video I posted above and others possibly like him) in a spot where innocents were unlikely to be harmed.
As a result, 7 of 8 people were arrested. The one who was killed fled in a vehicle (a felony in every state and community), jumped out of the vehicle after it became stuck ignoring commands (always a bad idea), and appeared to reach down while armed (yeah, I know - many disagree because it’s easier for them to believe the officers got up that morning and wanted to kill someone). I can’t reasonably see how blaming law enforcement for this is any more rational than blaming the cop who dealt with Micheal Brown in Ferguson.
The goal of law enforcement was clearly to arrest the individuals in the vehicle who were engaged in a whole host of felony conduct. I suppose a felony stop can be an ambush in that law enforcement tries to select the best spot, but it is NOT an ambush designed to kill - it was designed to arrest.
Perhaps the officers (who most likely preferred to be home with their families and policing their own communities) should have walked up to the barricades at the wildlife refuge and proposed duels at 20 paces?
This is ridiculous.
You can justify the actions of agents of state tyranny until you turn blue in the face.
NONE of this would have ever happened had the Federal Beast been adhering to it’s limits within the bounds of the Constitution. An innocent family would not be imprisoned for doing what was necessary on their own land to protect their home.
I guess we are witnessing just more of what Jefferson wrote when he said all experience has shown that men are disposed to suffer evil, while evils are sufferable rather than abolish the forms to which they have become accustomed.
And it is become self-evident that this people are become accustomed to tyranny and justify the actions of tyrants and their agents ad nauseum.
I think you’ve covered this very well. One thing I would add is a nod to the major difference between a modern well trained soldier or police officer and the people they have to deal with. As a soldier you had to train your mind to stay in analytical mode under tremendous pressure. Soldiers can not afford to suddenly go into survival fight/flee mode. You have to stay focused.
At the first stop the driver of the van, who had previously vowed he would not go to jail, went into survival mode - he fled. When his flight was suddenly cut off he panicked, jumped from his van without waiting for instructions. He looks to me to still be in flight or fight mode. He is not capable of considering his odds in a possible future court case. It’s flee or fight/fight or flee. Once it is clear that all avenues of flight are cut off he becomes his most dangerous. Meanwhile, all the well trained officers, who have been briefed on this man and his prior statements, are braced for that instant when his survival instinct will turn to fight only. They didn’t desire it, but they expected it. They have to.
They had every reason to interpret his movement of his hand within centimeters of his gun as an attempt to fight.