I have a little inside info on this as I have friends who know these guys and who have been to the ranch. The one surprising thing is that Riddle (known as "Tiny") did anything to deserve being shot. My source tells me, and the Star article alludes to, on August 31st Riddle put his weapon on the ground and assumed a "spread eagle" position. Why would he submit then but later, on Sep 15 in the Safeway parking lot, do something to lead an agent to shoot him?
The answer here is not to hunt down and break up nutty border militia groups like this. For all there whackiness these guys hadn't hurt anyone and were very careful of how they treated border intruders. If they'd just been left alone and if the border would have been secured they would have had no more reason to exist and would have broken up on their own. This is a symptom of our intolerable border situation.
"If the jaywalkers weren't out there breaking the law, then we wouldn't have to be swerving trying to hit them!"
That's not the info I'm getting from folks that worked with Casey and Jack Foote