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.
Not only are you making up words, now you're making up laws.
Post the law to back that restriction up.
"Sovereignty of the vehicle's interior belongs solely to the employee."
You're making a case for the right to steal from your employer.
Sovereignty to the contents of the land belongs solely to the person who owns it, and if that individual decides that the only way they will allow you access to their property if if you agree to your car being searched, then you either agree to that search, or turn away from the property.
Real simple...
Let's say that I own a company, and I have security guards posted at the entrance to its grounds.
There is a sign that advices you that in order for your vehicle to enter the property, you must agree to a search by the security guards, and that it will be searched again on the way out.
You approach the gate and refuse to let them search your vehicle, they refuse to grant you access.
End of story.
You have absolutely no right to be on someone else's property without their permission.
Have you now pulled your support for the 'gun-grabbing' GA bill?
--Honor has nothing to do with anything when citizens are pushed over the edge.--
He should never have bought the land if he didn't want them to use the easement. He wasn't "pushed". He just lost it.
Yeah, I'd be angry, too.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
--Post the law to back that restriction up.--
We could post the GA bill which you have said that you agree with but that isn't law yet.
"you called him insane, not me...."
"beyond rationality" intimates insanity.
one can surmise that the man who reacted so violently was subject to tyranny, the duration and intensity probably commensurate with the reaction.
--Red herring argument. Whether the yard was "flooded" or not, there was a leak (just in case you've never smelled a sewer leak, trust me, it's very obvious), it was the city's reposnsibility to fix it, and they didn't. --
Oh, it is ok to post false statements but when called on it shout "Red Herring" to the person that outs your false statement. Good debating tactic.
--there was a leak --
Did you make that up?
Now, a question to you: did you read the argument? A follow-up: wouldn't you be angry if you were in Mr. Watson's boots?
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
--one can surmise that the man who reacted so violently was subject to tyranny, the duration and intensity probably commensurate with the reaction.--
What tyranny. He bought a piece of property that included an easement. If he didn't like that easement, he should never have bought the property.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
The article says nothing about a leak or raw sewage so you must have made that up.
--I guess you've never smelled a sewer leak, have you?--
Yes. But what does that have to do with this except that you have made it up that there was a raw sewage leak.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Did Poland buy property with an easement prior to World War II? Did France? Did Ghengis Khan's mongol hordes riding bloody across the tundra have an easement? Did the Black Plague that swept across Europe have an easement?
Tpaine once wrote: "You ever read "Unintended Consequences" by John Ross?
Good example of 'my line'. -- A clear effort by our governments to deprive us of any of our fundamental individual rights would involve me in an insurrection or revolution."
Durasell, I have a question for you. You inferred in your post that when I or perhaps any of my fellow citizens become overly suspicious of the actions of government something will happen and a line will be crossed.
I tagged Tpaine so that he would, like me, be appraised of your answer to my question.
By now, you must be aware of the fact that this country was founded by a group of men who had just recently been involved in a rebellion against the government. This line thing intrigues me. Is it the moment in time where we as as citizens of this great nation embark upon another such adventure? Is what Garry Watson did just a precursor to what is to come?
I do not know and that is why I ask you.
Semper Fi
An Old Man
That's because the village blacksmith and the nice lady seamstress were not among the British troops. If they had been, they undoubtedly would have been shot at.
Using the Boston Tea Party as an analogy here was simply a poor choice on your part.
CA....
>>But killing these working men for "the principle" of the ability to act at will and without need for justification" is beyond rationality.<<
And that is what other people in the area said. They also said he was pushed.
One thing is for sure, if more people did it, we would all enjoy more freedom. In a real way, one could say he gave his life for our freedom.
Who is John Galt?
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