David Koresh felt that one day the government will come after his group, so he had his people train in the usage of firearms and conducted some "military" maneuvers on his ranch compound. I remember seeing footages of home movies showing some of these activities. However, all of it is LEGAL but in the eyes of any modern government it is ALARMING. Otherwise why would the government have a hard on for the Branch Davidians purchase and selling of guns in the open and in accordance with the law???
It was obvious before and after that any or all of those people, starting wespecially with Koresh, could have be n approached and arrested peacefully and we all know that the fact of their breathing is proof that they have committed infractions of some law or regulation. Everyone is arrestable for something.
So instead of disarming that supposition, the Government fulfilled his prophecy? D'oh!Every farmer or rancher in flyover country was now looking at the homestead from a defensive, tactical, military point of view, and realizing that if the Davidians had just put the Barretts on the tow vehicles (a .50 BMG round or two will fix an engine real good) and swept the canvas covered trailers from back to front (with all the select fire weapons they allegedly possessed) there might have been four survivors, instead of four dead.
If the Davadians "ambushed" anyone, they did a really lousy job, especially with a half-hour to prepare.
Heck, most cicillian amatuers could set up a much better 'ambush' with just a little thought, and no farmer, rural person, or homeowner looked at his land quite the same after that.
Somewhere in the back of their mind they created a tactical contingency plan, and maybe did more, cacheing a little ammo and an old rifle or two.
The 'Militia' movement blossomed as a result of Waco, despite attempt to villify it, because in the face of reasoned opposition, there was, and remains, no way for the Government to justify its actions. All they could do is put up the smokescreen, from burning the evidence to the softpeddaling of questions in the COngressional inquiry. The latter was televised, in part. Each side of the aisle got 5 minutes to ask questions, then the other side, alternating. On CNN, that translated to 5 minutes of the Chuckie Schumer show, followed by 5 minutes of commercials. They kept that up for the first day. On C-SPAN, at least you got the 'live' feed in its presumed entirety, but the real meat and potaoes came later on in the hearings, and that was only televised in part after the house was done with its business for the day.
Of course, the House would spend hours doing special orders, or not, the feed was edited, and the timing was such that the hearing cast might start anywhere from 6 PM to Midnight and run until from 1 AM to 4 or 5. In short, with no TIVO, and only VHS, you would need to gang a group of VCRs on timers to record it or stay up all night to watch. I got some of it on VHS, but even that was tough.
So the facts were, for all practical purposes, squelched after the first day of grandstanding, and that only presented form one side for the average viewer.
When it came to the FLIR tape, tow of the nations foremost FLIR interpreters woke up dead in the morning in rapid succession, Bill Colby allegedly drowned accidentally, and finally someone surfaced with some credentials to say the IR was relfected sunlight. Do a search on it, learn about reflected IR. Learn and learn of the deceit involved in the coverup of one of the most heinous acts done by a gevernment agency in a long itme that was not confined to the venues of Congress or an administrative office.