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.
Don't let t suck you into his idiotic argument, the employer does not prohibit anything in anyone's car, he prohibits access to his property based on what's in your car.
That's a different thing.
If the owner of a piece of property doesn't want you to bring a gun on his property, that's his right.
No one has the Right to be on someone else's property against their wishes.
Or fantasies of blowing up a gummint building in OK City.
The only real difference between this murderous kook who later killed himself and Mohammed Atta or Timothy McVeigh is that the latter two were more organized and efficient homicidal maniacs.
Who is John Gault?
Gunner
He obviously regretted his decision, hence he shot himself. Why couldn't he have just drove to a lawyer's office first?
--He obviously regretted his decision, hence he shot himself. Why couldn't he have just drove to a lawyer's office first?--
The police report said he was found dead after an intensive two-day manhunt in the forest. It was not mentioned how long he had been dead when they found him.
This guy works at a battery recycling plant, the very first thing I woud do is check his lead level in his body.
"Organic lead compounds are absorbed rapidly through the skin, through the lungs, and selectively absorbed by the central nervous system. Encephalopathy is characterized by signs of stupor, progressing to coma and often, terminating in death. Excitation, confusion, hallucinations, distorted perceptions and mania are less common." http://www.minerals.csiro.au/safety/lead.htm
I agree 100%.
Do you think this guy would have sued if this his house flooded because of inadequate drainage?
Don't know - - I REALLY wish there was more info about this story.
Just because the gunfight at the OK Corral is documented, doesn't mean these men didn't cause havoc leading up to the Boston Tea Party.
Hell, if we lose to the Islamists, in 50 years it will be a 'fact' the WTC was a controlled demolition.
Forgive me for upsetting you.
But isn't that the same as saying, the armed invaders aren't my enemy, the king is?
They are the ones carrying out the edict of the king and they are the ones violating the rights of the property owner.
And no, I don't think he should have shot them.
"...for the end of Government is the preservation of property, and there can be no property where there is an arbitrary power of taxation...[T]he law of nature, being founded in reason and justice, admits of property; for the better preservation of which, and for the use and enjoyment of it in peace and quiet, men entered into society. If therefore, any man, or body of men, claim a right to take away at pleasure from other men their property, and to dispose of it as they please[,] such claim tends to a dissolution of society, and is repugnant also to the law of nature, as it would place mankind in a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others.” -- Anonymous letter explaining the reasons behind the Boston Tea Party, published by the London Gazetteer on April 7, 1774
PING
--Clever non-answer. -- You are not trespassing - you are an employee with a right to carry a gun in your vehicle, -- as you admit.--
trespass n. entering another person's property without permission of the owner or his/her agent and without lawful authority (like that given to a health inspector) and causing any damage, no matter how slight.
We're talking about streetlights that were installed, at taxpayer expense by the municipality, and whose operations are paid for by the homeowners via a seperate electric utility bill. Above, and beyond, municipal property taxes and municipal income taxes.
As we all know, the "government" pays for nothing. All taxes, be they property, sales, corporate, excise, etc., ad nauseum, are paid by the individual citizen taxpayer.
Corporations do not pay taxes; taxes are added as a cost of doing business, by corporate entities, and are paid by the individual.
"The moment that idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the Laws of God and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." -- John Adams
The story is very incomplete, but I believe that for somebody to snap the way this guy Watson did, something had to be terribly wrong. I have to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who was home trying to mind his own business over the government intruders.
It was a horrible tragedy all the way around, and IMO it was up to the government to bend over backwards to make sure the homeowner was dealt with fairly, whatever it took. Everybody knew the situation was volatile, because they were warned.
"I have to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who was home trying to mind his own business over the government intruders."
Clarification to the above. The were trying to work on the sewer line on their easement. They WERE NOT intruding.
His schtick was his castle and his last remaining symbol of individual freedom...where one can Freep naked if she wishes.
This event won't changed right-to-own laws on guns. But hopefully, it will give pause to the folks who write and enforce the laws.
More information about this situation might reveal what made this guy snap the way he did. That said, I will give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who was home trying to mind his own business over government intruders every time, until more information is known.
Regards,
LH
The truth of the matter is that we are becoming a nation of Marxists, where private property is abused at the request of and to benefit the masses, and industry is perceived as evil oppressors of the proletariat.
How many rights have we lost in the name of "the good of society"?
Back in the sixties a struggle ensued to eliminate racial discrimination; it became illegal to exclude people based on their race, then on their religion, then on their age, then on their sex.
All noble causes indeed.
Where are we right now as we grow in the continuation of that noble cause?
The Boy Scouts of America cannot exclude homosexuals from becoming Scout Troop leaders.
The road to tyranny is paved with noble causes.
"Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist." -- John Adams
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.