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.
I tried to make that kind of point once in a bar where city maintenance workers hung out.. Something about being "at the public trough" -- was as far as I got before the fight started.
I agree, but I don't see how you can fairly say a man is justified in violently stopping someone from putting in a pubic sewer when there is an easement for that purpose.
That's what you seemed to be saying to me, sorry if I misunderstood.
--That's what happens when people are reduced to feelings of "powerlessness." You eventually get an irrational, sometimes deadly backlash. Frankly, I'm surprised there have not been a whole lot more of these killings--
Me too. If the anarchist that post on FR were any indication, we would have four or five of these a day.
Go ahead: Make my day --
Why do YOU think we have a Second Amendment?
Did you ever send them a formal bill detailing the damages?
--The city can install new lines through my property after it has paid me for it. People in the Mountain West take their property rights zealously. Its not like the government had no advance warning the guy was going to protect his property. He owned it - not the state. --
They had an easement. Go read your deed. I bet you have an easement with restrictions on what you can do with that part of your property.
Totally agree. I feel terrible for the workmen killed. I have no sympathy for the loser/coward who shot dead defenseless men then couldn't cope with what the justice that would come upon him. I hope the bastard burns in hell.
I believe he said "urban centers" because the majority of our larger inner-cities are run by corrupt, inept, socialist (demonRATS, progressives, etc.) bureaucrats who have no qualms at all about using and abusing their, unfortunately, considerable powers.
That is less the case in Red states "flyover" country, the South, Soutwest, etc.
--Go ahead: Make my day --Why do YOU think we have a Second Amendment?--
How many civil servants have you killed today?
I have had several stipulations for this next foray by the city on my property with them going to pay for every thing that has to be fixed and them having to pay for any costs...lawyers too. I appreciate you pointing me to my homeowner's policy, I never thought about "seeking" the insurance company on the sorry sons of loose dogs.
So, you admit it? You have no idea why the Second Amendment exists?
But that's not what happened here. The city wasn't satisfied with the easement they had and wanted another one - better, larger, longer - whatever.
Normally when somebody wants an easement, they PAY the landowner for it, if he agrees to grant one.
If I had a small easement to use part of your road for ingress and egress to my property, and I decided I needed to expand that so I could drive directly to an outbuilding I planned to put at the back of my property, I would have to come to you and ask for the easement. You would then say "Yes", "No", "Hell no", or "Okay, but pay me $x,000.00 for the easement." We would then lay out the length, width and what the usage of the easement would be, reduce it to a legal description, you grant it to me, I pay you, and I go record the easement.
The city didn't do that. They were warned to get off his property. He shouldn't have shot them, but they pushed him over the edge. The real tragedy is that it was just city workmen sent to do a job, including the deputy, who were shot instead of the city managers who made the decision.
The man who did the shooting worked at a battery recycling plant. He obviously couldn't afford to fight the city machine with lawyers, so he used the means afforded by the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. The real tragedy is that he shot himself. There's a good chance the jury would either nullify his actions or certainly give great weight to the mitigating factors. If I was on the jury, I would. My argument with him would be that he shot the wrong people.
Maybe next time the city decides to steal access to someone's property they'll think twice and do it the right way - negotiate and PAY for it!
I've done a lot of hunting on public lands. -- I agree, there's a ~lot~ of irrational property owners out there.
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. 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
This is indeed a tragedy, and I wish it had not come to this. However, I do believe it is going to take some good people doing some very bad things to make our government listen to us.
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