Militia member 'filled with rage,' plotted ambush

The Grand Rapids Press ^ | Friday, October 17, 2003 | Ed White

[FourPeas]

Militia member 'filled with rage,' plotted ambush

Friday, October 17, 2003

By Ed White
The Grand Rapids Press

It was a rural arsenal fit for war.

After the peaceful arrest of a Cadillac-area man, authorities who searched his 40-acre compound discovered a stunning collection of firepower, including an anti-aircraft gun capable of firing 550 rounds per minute up to four miles away.

A van and a Jeep Cherokee, described by the suspect as his "war wagons," had machine guns inside, with one "locked, loaded and ready to go," Assistant U.S. Attorney Lloyd Meyer said.

Agents found an underground bunker, thousands of rounds of ammunition, hundreds of pounds of gunpowder and manuals on guerrilla warfare, "booby traps" and explosives.

There were chilling pictures of President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the cross-hairs of a high-

see MILITIA, A4

powered rifle scope drawn over them, Meyer said.

Norman Somerville, 43, was arrested last week on federal gun and drug charges as he shopped at Home Depot in Cadillac. Authorities then spent the weekend combing his property in Wexford County's Antioch Township, about 20 miles northwest of Cadillac.

Details of the search were disclosed in a court document filed Thursday in federal court in Grand Rapids, four days before a judge will decide whether Somerville should remain in jail while his case is pending.

Somerville was "filled with rage and intended to ambush people, mowing them down in a hail of machine-gun bullets," Meyer said, quoting informants. He belongs to a "self-styled radical militia unit" whose members are upset over the death of Scott Woodring, the prosecutor said.

Woodring was the Newaygo County man fatally shot by state police during the summer, days after a trooper died while trying to serve him with an arrest warrant.

State police were told in September that Somerville wanted to cause a car accident, then "ambush and kill" any responding officers with a machine gun mounted in his Jeep, Meyer wrote in the court document.

An unidentified source, described as one of Somerville's "trusted associates," feared he had become "mentally unbalanced and would kill an innocent person or be killed," Meyer said.

Somerville may face additional charges linked to the search of his property, although Meyer declined to elaborate.

Two years ago, Somerville moved to Wexford County from elsewhere in northern Michigan. He served in the Army from 1978 to 1984 and was trained as an intelligence analyst assigned to the elite Special Forces.

During a brief court appearance last week in Grand Rapids, Somerville said: "The people will have their day. ... There's a quiet civil war going on in the country."

In Antioch Township, five miles outside Mesick, neighbors said he is not the type to share a cup of sugar.

"We told our kids to stay off his property. There was gunfire a lot," said Lynda Sherburne, a former township clerk who lives nearby. "Who knows where the stray bullets are going.

"He got angry very easily. No contact with him was the best contact."

Sherburne said her nephew's house shook as state and federal authorities detonated explosives found on Somerville's property.

"I don't think anyone realized he was stockpiling back there," she said.

[af_vet_1981]

This is relevant to gun control how?

The Constitution says the "right to bear arms." The 1828 Webster's dictionary defines "arms" as :

1. Weapons of offense, or armor for defense and protection of the body.
2. War; hostility. Arms and the man I sing. To be in arms, to be in a state of hostility, or in a military life. To arms is a phrase which denotes a taking arms for war or hostility; particularly, a summoning to war. To take arms, is to arm for attack or defense. Bred to arms denotes that a person has been educated to the profession of a soldier.
3. The ensigns armorial of a family; consisting of figures and colors borne in shields, banners, &c., as marks of dignity and distinction, and descending from father to son.
4. In law, arms are any thing which a man takes in his hand in anger, to strike or assault another.
5. In botany, one of the seven species of fulcra or props of plants, enumerated by Linne and others. The different species of arms or armor, are prickles, thorns, forks and stings, which seem intended to protect the plants from injury by animals. Sire arms, are such as may be charged with powder, as cannon, muskets, mortars, &c. A stand of arms consists of a musket, bayonet, cartridge-box and belt, with a sword. But for common soldiers a sword is not necessary. In falconry, arms are the legs of a hawk from the thigh to the foot.

What precisely would you control and restrict "arms" to mean ?

[Poohbah]

The Rockafellers, Bush's, and Kenndy's might be able to afford all the necessary equipement to make, and store, their own atomic weapons. The things are hideously expensive to maintain.

Actually, they aren't; even at peak numbers of deployed and stored weapons, the total budget for nuclear weapons (including R&D, acquisition, and O&M costs) never exceeded 1% of the DoD budget, and we had something like 30,000 weapons in the stockpile--and that was at grossly overpriced government rates.

And many of the folks interested in nuclear weapons would not be interested in holding onto said weapons long enough for maintenance to be an issue.

[Dead Corpse]

People who think like you are one reason we need gun control.

And people like you are the reason the Second was added to the Constitution. Come to think of it, people like you are also part of the reason why governments have slaughtered so many of their unarmed civilians.

You still failed to point out where in the Constitution it gives the FedGov the power to regulate on this topic at all.

Noted.

[Dead Corpse]

And the billions we are currently dumping into storage, maintanance, and research is what? Chicken feed? Can you afford it? I'm willing to bet even Gates would have trouble being able to keep his own arsenal.

[af_vet_1981]

You still failed to point out where in the Constitution it gives the FedGov the power to regulate on this topic at all.

Article I
Section 8.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States;

[Poohbah]

And the billions we are currently dumping into storage, maintanance, and research is what? Chicken feed?

Considering that we're not dumping "billions" into it at this time--it's actually a bit less than a billion--yes.

Can you afford it?

The entire infrastructure? No.

Can I afford a nuclear bomb?

Yes.

Particularly if I only intend to own it long enough to get it to its DGZ (designated ground zero) and detonate it.

[Hat-Trick]

" wonder if the 2nd Amendment had anti-aircraft weapons in mind?"

I wonder if the 1st Amendment had your asinine comment in mind?

Yes, and unfortunately yes.

Hat-Trick

[Dead Corpse]

Bzzzt! Try again. Unless you want to do the democrat thing and try and sneak it in under a pennumbra of the general welfare clause. Wasn't what they meant. Read something.

Also, the Second was written after the rest of the Constitution. The AMENDMENTS, clarify and modify the articles that cam before it.

The Second says quite clearly... "shall not be infringed." Do you need help with that one as well?

[Dead Corpse]

Are you so delusional to think that would really happen? Now assume there were private US citizens with nukes as well who could think of nothing better than to airmail them to Iraq.

It'd make for a REAL short war. If we had had that kind of a policy from the beginning... we would probably still have two really tall office towers standing in New York.

[from occupied ga]

What precisely would you control and restrict "arms" to mean ?

You're the one who wants to restrict it. I see nothing wrong with an individual owning a tank if he wants one (and can afford one). Since the founding fathers issued "letters of marque and reprisal" commissioning what at the time was equivalent to private battleships neither did they.

When you come right down to it weapons of mass destruction exist. They are now under control of the least trustwothty of all entities - governments. Governments were responsible for the murder of 60,000,000 of their own citizens during the 20th century alone. You don't have a problem with artillery and tanks etc in the hands of people like Kim Jong, but you want to see more restrictions on our God given and Bill of Rights enumerated right to defend ourselves against tyranny. I find that attitude both puzzling and disturbing. I am not worried about the random criminal taking my liberty or my property*. It is the legions of JBTs and secret police along with plunder hungry bureaucrats and politicians that need to be kept in check.

*I've been burgularized a couple of time and some individuals attempted to rob me at one time. My total losses to criminals over the years has been at most a couple of thousand dollars. Just guestimating, I've paid in excess of a million dollars in danegeld (taxes) since I started working.

[Dead Corpse]

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Dead Corpse]

I empathize. It sometimes seems like I've had run-ins with every neo-con gun grabber on this forum. People who make a lot of sense on things like taxation, can turn around and be complete idiots on gun control.

I find it hard to believe that such Torie nonsense, like gun control, can be considered "conservative" though. It doesn't even fit the definition of "neo-con".

[Dead Corpse]

The government has the right to restrict some freedoms and some times for some people if there is a compelling state interest.

Wrong. The Fed Gov only has the duties lotted to it in the Constitution. Period. It has no power to regulate other than what a complicit judiciary and "We the People..." allow them to get away with.

The Constitution is unambiguous on this issue. The BATFE shouldn't even exist.