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.
--For Mr. Watson, it was defense of his private property, his home and his family.--
He may have thought that but he was wrong. And you are wrong to be supporting a murderer.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1774791/posts?page=222#222
It's amazing what you can find out if you don't rely JUST on the opinion of one person ...
It's worse than you think. This article left out some details that were in the original. The legal easement was on Watson's property. When he told the city it needed repair, they refused to check out the problem. There was a clog in the sewer pipe, that caused some type of problem that was noticible to Watson. In other words, it flooded his property with raw sewage.
See my post 448.
--I will say this one last time, 'cause I'm getting tired of repeating myself: from what I understood from the story, the city's easement was not originally under this man's property, but elsewhere.--
I am getting tire of repeating that you are wrong.
--Now, I hope you understand my point. Time to move on to further discussion.--
No. I cannot understand how you can support a murderer just by reading an opinion column with researching the facts.
--It's worse than you think. This article left out some details that were in the original. The legal easement was on Watson's property. When he told the city it needed repair, they refused to check out the problem. There was a clog in the sewer pipe, that caused some type of problem that was noticible to Watson. In other words, it flooded his property with raw sewage.--
None of that is in the news accounts published at the time.
Thank you. I have to run out soon, but will check these out as soon as I can.
http://www.hannibal.net/stories/090800/com_0908000007.html http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/09/07/officer.shot.03.ap/index.html http://www.amarillo.com/stories/090800/usn_mankills.shtml http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/09/08/officer.shot.ap/index.html http://www.morningsun.net/stories/091000/kan_0910000006.shtml
There was once a similar difference of opinion when a bunch of farmers shot and killed some members of the King's army
Was this also regarding a sewer dispute?
Every conflict between the gubmint and citizens is not noble. This one is just tragic because it was so unnecessary.
--You seem obsessed with your vision of what the GA bill meant to achieve. -- Why is that, considering that you agree:--
Because you were inititally obsessed with the bill and whether I agreed with it or not even though my position as posted to you before I saw the bill agreed with the bill. I say I agree with the bill, you say you agree with it but you called me a gun grabber. I ask you again, DO YOU AGREE WITH THE GA BILL?
Was Mr. Rosemann lying, or was Mr. Suprynowicz lying when he attributed that statement to him?
There was another post where the guy explained the legality of the notice but I got tired of looking for it.
If so, yeah, you'd better believe I'd have a serious problem with it.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
No. The emploer's parking desion must be restricted to considerstionof the vehicle only.
"" Freedom belongs to both the employee and the employer, not just to the employee."
Sovereignty of the vehicle's interior belongs solely to the employee. Respect for the rights of the employee applies. The employer's right ends at the vehicle boundary.
Where does it say ANYWHERE that his property was flooded with raw sewage?
--So he had 1) raw sewage backing up into his yard, and 2) to bear the expense of fixing a serious problem (can you say health risk, aside from the awful smell?).--
Did you just make that up?
--Sovereignty of the vehicle's interior belongs solely to the employee. Respect for the rights of the employee applies. The employer's right ends at the vehicle boundary.--
Uh, when you go to work for the employer, you agree to abide by his rules. The constitution does not give you the right to trespass his property.
There are plenty of places available to you to do your shopping and everything you wish to do, where you can park your car without any restrictions, what you want to do is remove from EVERYONE the right to control access to their property. You don't have unfettered access to every piece of property in the US.
There is additionally the issue of the property owner's OWN right to self defense, and if that property owner believes that being the only armed individual within the confines of his own property, then what right do you have to violate his own unalienable right to self defense.
Do business in those places without parking restrictions (that's the vast majority of shopping centers in the US), and work for those employers who don't care what's in your vehicle while you're at work, but don't try using the Constitution to violate the rights of property owners.
Here's the question you refuse to answer...what right do you have to be on someone else's property against their wishes?
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?
All this happened in the real world, where irrational bureaucrats drive irrational property owners into corners that should not exist under our Constitution.
The shooters 'principle' about property was flawed. So was that of the 'authorities'.
Lancy:
One thing I've noticed throughout this (fairly long) thread is how many people mention the tragic murder of the "maintenance men", the "working men" - - it is instructive that not one single poster has noted with any concern that a politician was also killed in the confrontation.
Good point. -- Lets hope some local bureaucrats get the picture, -- that they too are bound by our constitution.
--The shooters 'principle' about property was flawed. So was that of the 'authorities'.--
What was flawed about the 'authorities'?
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
You ducked the question. Did you make that up?
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