Posted on 01/27/2007 1:36:11 PM PST by tpaine
By Vin Suprynowicz
For years, Garry Watson, 49, of little Bunker, Mo., (population 390) had been squabbling with town officials over the sewage line easement which ran across his property to the adjoining, town-operated sewage lagoon.
Residents say officials grew dissatisfied with their existing easement, and announced they were going to excavate a new sewer line across the landowner's property. Capt. Chris Ricks of the Missouri Highway Patrol reports Watson's wife, Linda, was served with "easement right-of-way papers" on Sept. 6. She gave the papers to Watson when he got home at 5 a.m. the next morning from his job at a car battery recycling plant northeast of Bunker. Watson reportedly went to bed for a short time, but arose about 7 a.m. when the city work crew arrived.
"He told them 'If you come on my land, I'll kill you,' " Bunker resident Gregg Tivnan told me last week. "Then the three city workers showed up with a backhoe, plus a police officer. They'd sent along a cop in a cop car to guard the workers, because they were afraid there might be trouble. Watson had gone inside for a little while, but then he came out and pulled his SKS (semi-automatic rifle) out of his truck, steadied it against the truck, and he shot them."
Killed in the September 7 incident, from a range of about 85 yards, were Rocky B. Gordon, 34, a city maintenance man, and David Thompson, 44, an alderman who supervised public works. City maintenance worker Delmar Eugene Dunn, 51, remained in serious but stable condition the following weekend.
Bunker police Officer Steve Stoops, who drove away from the scene after being shot, was treated and released from a hospital for a bullet wound to his arm and a graze to the neck.
Watson thereupon kissed his wife goodbye, took his rifle, and disappeared into the woods, where his body was found two days later -- dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Following such incidents, the local papers are inevitably filled with well-meaning but mawkish doggerel about the townsfolk "pulling together" and attempting to "heal" following the "tragedy." There are endless expressions of frustration, pretending to ask how such an otherwise peaceful member of the community could "just snap like that."
In fact, the supposedly elusive explanation is right before our eyes.
"He was pushed," Clarence Rosemann -- manager of the local Bunker convenience store, who'd done some excavation work for Watson -- told the big-city reporters from St. Louis. Another area resident, who didn't want to be identified, told the visiting newsmen, "Most people are understanding why Garry Watson was upset. They are wishing he didn't do it, but they are understanding why he did it."
You see, to most of the people who work in government and the media these days -- especially in our urban centers -- "private property" is a concept out of some dusty, 18th century history book. Oh, sure, "property owners" are allowed to live on their land, so long as they pay rent to the state in the form of "property taxes."
But an actual "right" to be let alone on our land to do whatever we please -- always providing we don't actually endanger the lives or health of our neighbors?
Heavens! If we allowed that, how would we enforce all our wonderful new "environmental protection" laws, or the "zoning codes," or the laws against growing hemp or tobacco or distilling whisky without a license, or any of the endless parade of other malum prohibitum decrees which have multiplied like swarms of flying ants in this nation over the past 87 years?
What does it mean to say we have any "rights" or "freedoms" at all, if we cannot peacefully enjoy that property which we buy with the fruits of our labors?
In his 1985 book "Takings," University of Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein wrote that, "Private property gives the right to exclude others without the need for any justification.
Indeed, it is the ability to act at will and without need for justification within some domain which is the essence of freedom, be it of speech or of property."
"Unfortunately," replies James Bovard, author of the book "Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen," "federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors are making private property much less private. ...
Park Forest, Ill. in 1994 enacted an ordinance that authorizes warrantless searches of every single-family rental home by a city inspector or police officer, who are authorized to invade rental units 'at all reasonable times.' ... Federal Judge Joan Gottschall struck down the searches as unconstitutional in 1998, but her decision will have little or no effect on the numerous other localities that authorize similar invasions of privacy."
We are now involved in a war in this nation, a last-ditch struggle in which the other side contends only the king's men are allowed to use force or the threat of force to push their way in wherever they please, and that any peasant finally rendered so desperate as to employ the same kind of force routinely employed by our oppressors must surely be a "lone madman" who "snapped for no reason." No, we should not and do not endorse or approve the individual choices of folks like Garry Watson. But we are still obliged to honor their memories and the personal courage it takes to fight and die for a principle, even as we lament both their desperate, misguided actions ... and the systematic erosion of our liberties which gave them rise.
Quit the suspense....and tell us.
How much did Mr. Watson respect the city's rights to their property (the existing sewer main, for which they had a proper easement)?
--By all means, don't upset the anti-gunners. They're reasonable folks, after all.--
You miss the point. The battle is fought in the middle and a lot of on-the-fence people see these types of statements as something that is not acceptable and will support gun laws to prevent idiots from shooting up their neighborhood.
While I side with his actions, I also recognize the fact that he knew he was faced with imprisonment.
I would have done the same thing........
Rather than die from old age or or some incurable ailment, I would rather go down in a blaze of gunfire or self inflicted injury standing up for what I believe in.......
So very true. I stand corrected :)
"Conservatives believe in establishing governments in order to provide for a better community and to protect property rights using laws established by their elected representatives. Anarchists believe is shooting those that try to enforce the laws."
Enforce what law? Show me a law that says a municipality can give you notice of a taking and show up two hours later to take. The city had a lesser or different easement than what they showed up to take and do with it.
That's tyranny, not law and order.
How do you know that? Because it didn't make it in the story?
Don't forget. The victor writes the history.
--Rather than die from old age or or some incurable ailment, I would rather go down in a blaze of gunfire or self inflicted injury standing up for what I believe in.......--
I hope you relatives are aware of your plans and put you away before you can harm them.
Nonsense. Digging up and destroying or upsetting the earth is not the same as an airplane passing overhead.
No, he didn't say that. He said the 2A was intended as a right against governmental tyranny.
READ the article! The city decided that easement was insufficient. They wanted a different/better/wider/longer/whatever sewer line access than the existing easement accommodated, so they gave his wife notice when he was at work the night before the early morning they planned to just show up and TAKE what they wanted.
"So I came in his trash cans, instead."
Laz, you seriously need some professional help. :)
Sec. 24-115. Easements.
The inspector and other duly authorized employees of the city bearing proper credentials and identification shall be permitted to enter all private properties through which the city holds duly negotiated easements for the purposes of, but not limited to, inspection, observation, measurement, sampling, repair and maintenance of any portion of the sewage works lying within the easement. All entry and subsequent work, if any, on the easement, shall be done in full accordance with the terms of the duly negotiated easement pertaining to the private property involved.
(Ord. No. 357, art. VIII, § 3, 9-4-79)
Normally, I agree with Vin.
But Killing these working men for "the principle" of the ability to act at will and without need for justification" is beyond rationality.
A new sewer line running under his ~property~ was a justifiable cause for killing?"
Retorically speaking, why is it that there is always a "but" in these things.
Happy now? The "but" is just a convention of writing, -- it doesn't change the meaning of what I wrote.
Do we have to have some tribunal meet to declare that the government is acting in a tyranical manner? Just where is the line that must be crossed before good men are allowed to act?
I eagerly await your response.
Semper Fi An Old Man
My line would be crossed if the city 'took' an easement without reasonable compensation. ---- I would go after the officials responsible, not the workingmen.
Agree. This guy was nothing but a twisted murderer.
Digging in the earth doesn't equal destroying, and flying overhead isn't necessarily free of consequence. Not even bothering with noise pollution, it leaves behind jet smoke and has the potential to rattle things off the walls, break windows, etc.
I'm not saying they are exactly equal, but anybody who thinks he can draw bright lines that make perfect sense and are always applicable in every circumstance is fooling themselves.
From what's written here, this doesn't sound like a simple matter of repairing or upgrading the existing easement. This sounds like someone in public works was determined to show the land owner who's got the biggest d*** in the county. Unfortunately, "Mr. Johnson" got a bunch of other people killed. They got in this guy's face and, as you say, he lost it; a very avoidable conclusion.
people are like a bucket of water,when it gets full it runs over.
I don't think our founding fathers were thinking of going around administering vigilante justice against the local sewer guy. You are totally misreading the values and virtues of our founding fathers.
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