Not quite right about Randy Weaver....
The feds approached Mr. Weaver and wanted him to infiltrate, and inform on, the Aryan Nations church in northern Idaho. Randy declined. Weaver was approached again at an Aryan Nations rally by an undercover ATF agent who expressed a desire to buy sawed off shotguns. Weaver sold the agent shotguns....full-length shotguns, according to Weaver....and he told the agent to shorten them himself. Another version of this story stated that Weaver shortened the shotguns himself, in front of the undercover ATF agent, to the length he requested, and the shotguns were only slightly shorter than legally permitted....I think it was a quarter of an inch.
ATF agents then approached Weaver again, accusing him of selling illegal weapons, and offered to drop all charges if he would spy on the Aryan Nations on behalf of the feds. Randy again refused.
Randy was arrested, and later served with court papers. He didn’t “ignore a federal court order to appear”......the court papers had the wrong date for his court appearance! When Randy didn’t appear, a bench warrant was issued, a marshal went to Randy’s property to serve it, and a series of events led to a bloody siege, including Randy’s wife being shot in the head while holding her baby.
Later, some of the ATF agents shouted the following comment at the body of Randy’s wife, Vicki: “We had pancakes for breakfast, Mrs. Weaver, what did you have?”
Oh it get's much worse than that. With her dead body on the front porch and her infant trapped beneath her body the agents would call out to Randy still forted up in the cabin: Hey Randy, we hear the baby cryin.' Why don't you just stick your head out anc check on the poor thing? They finally got Bo Gritz the highly decorated special forces soldier to come in and mediate the surrender. Later, famed defense attorney Gerry Spence took his case for free and won on showing how poor the government had constructed their own case without actually even putting on his own defense.
I remember the stuff about the Aryan Nations, whose property just happened to border Weaver's. But Weaver was an isolationist. He wasn't a so called racist or segregationist as the press tried to paint him, he just wanted to be left alone with his family and the feds wouldn't let him. Understand, I'm not in any way trying to put a nice face on this. I also find it interesting that everytime you see our government acting like nazi storm troops against John Q. Citizen, somewhere lurking around is a case for the BATFE. Then if they screw it up, the case goes to the FBI and gives them a shot ('scuse the wording) at screwing the pooch. Like with the Weaver arrest.
I know the whole entrapment story with the shortened shotguns. Randy should have gone directly to the US Attorney when the whole scheme was dumped on him. Or better yet, the PRESS. Also, even if you're given the wrong date to appear in court, it is still your responsibility to be proactive and find out where and when you're supposed to appear and then....GO! Randy was still stupid in this. But not as stupid as the idiot feds who tried to pull this one off in the first place. There was one of them who wasn't stupid, he's a murderer: LON HORIUCHI was the FBI sniper that popped the wife. I heard he was also at Waco, giving "advice" during the standoff.
Additional comments:
The story was published in American Rifleman in, I think, March or April 1993. It was a fairly complete account.
According to this version, Weaver shortened the shotguns to 18-1/4" on his first pass. The ATF informant, desiring to entrap Weaver, demanded that Weaver shorten them further to exactly 18". Weaver initially resisted, but dogged by the informant, shortened them again, and that was when the complaint issued.
In the aftermath, other competent authority remeasured the shotguns in question and found that the barrels were, in fact, legal, and that ATF had mismeasured them.
The detail about the incorrect court date was in the American Rifleman story as well. Weaver bailed out and retired to his mountain because he was convinced (correctly) he was being singled out for persecution and prosecution and despaired of a fair proceeding.
He should have relied on an attorney, as you say, but for a low-educated autodidact (and that mostly out of the Bible; he and wife Vickie were really big Bible readers) he actually sized up the situation fairly accurately. He really needed a friend to steer him right, and he didn't have one. Instead he had the BATF well and truly riding his back.
I never heard the "pancake" remark before.