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.
Sorry, there is nothing "courageous" about killing yourself.
There's definitely nothing courageous about killing these men who were just doing their jobs. Now somebody is missing a father, a husband, an uncle, a brother or a good friend because of property rights. This is terrible.
Funny, that's the identical argument most REAL gun grabbers use to ban certain types of weapons.
You're lying again...no one has ever denied you the right to carry weapons in your vehicle, what you DON'T have is the right to access private property against the wishes of the person or persons who owns that property.
I'll tell you exactly what the Founders thought about private property:
"One great object of Govt. is personal protection of the security of property." -- Alexander Hamilton"Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist." -- John Adams
"The right of property, is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty." -- Arthur Lee
"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
Property -- This term in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual." -- James Madison
Property as "sacred as the laws of God..."
What the Founders never truly imagined is the idea that their Constitution would be used to violate people's rights to their property in the name of convenient parking.
I understand their words, you don't.
--Okay, maybe this will require a little logical reasoning, but why would a man go to the trouble and expense of digging up a sewer line, if it weren't leaking?--
It was clogged?
I didn't mean to imply anything that dramatic. I do believe that when suspicion of The Government reaches a certain level it becomes a pathology. What it takes to reach that level is probably a long process that includes a sense of helplessness and a feeling of alienation from the system.
--Did Poland buy property with an easement prior to World War II?--
I don't know. Most probably.
You nailed my take on it, and articulated it VERY well.
Thanks.
Just like "offical" war veterans, he gave his life in the preservation of the freedom of other citizens.
A day that is creeping closer and closer, gathering speed by the minute.
--Is what Garry Watson did just a precursor to what is to come?--
Gary lost it. Nuts have been losing it for ages. Nothing new here. This happened in 2000. How many nuts have been shooting utility workers before and since. Please show us a trend.
>>~If~ [BIG if] he had a valid reason for killing, -- he killed the wrong men. The city officials forcing the issue were his enemies, not the workingmen.<<
You gotta kill the grunts in the foxholes to get to Hitler.
"Was this also regarding a sewer dispute?"
No, but it was a property dispute.
I'm glad to see this guy take a stand
That guy was a cold blooded murderer and a coward. He knew those men were not there to do him physical harm, and yet he took his time to aim and shoot these men. Hardworking, family men. I hope he agrees with his property lines in hell or Satan is in for some trouble. If any of the victims have children, I bet you couldn't look them in the eye and tell them their daddy is dead because someone "took a stand"
"-- You have absolutely no right to be on someone else's property without their permission. --"
And if permission is absolutely refused -- Watson [and Luis?] claimed the 'right' to shoot the trespasser.
Thanks luis, you've made my point.
The edge of my property.
At that point, my rights kick in.
>>Now somebody is missing a father, a husband, an uncle, a brother or a good friend because of property rights. This is terrible.<<
It is what happens to families on both sides in a war. War is hell.
The guys running the backhoe were not soldiers, or cops. They didn't have a way to defend themselves, nor should they have had to. You need to worry more about where your sense of right and wrong are then you do about my misuse of apostrophes.
--The local county government seems to always deal from a threatening tone, constantly.--
I have had several dealings with properties in several states, including California. In each case, the county government has bent over backwards to be polite and non-threatening.
No, but it was a property dispute.
All property disputes are not equal. Not to harp on the point, but there are actual people did because of this thing. Guys with families, most likely. American citizens who did nothing more than get up in the morning and go to their job. They were not an enemy nation attacking our country. They were just guy trying to fix a pipe.
Look, stick to the subject at hand, if you want to continue the debate with me. The fact is there was obviously some kind of problem with the sewer line, which the city wouldn't fix. He fixed it himself, and evidently, the city wouldn't compensate him for it. They then decided to take more of his property without due process. The rest is history.
If you want to split hairs and launch into red herring diversions, that's fine...I have better things to do. If you want to debate property rights and the logic or illogic of what Mr. Watson did, please stick to that subject.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
It would not have taken more than a couple of hours to get a restraining order pending a hearing. Why didn't they guy call a lawyer asap?
You got suckered by Suprynowicz's lies and spin. He decided to leave out clarification regarding the easement because it doesn't suit his agenda.
In the links I provided you will find clarification on the easement, and that it was preexisting. The feud had been going on for 10 years. The piece of trailer trash was trying to keep the rest of the residents in the town from having a functioning sewer system.
The feud between Watson, who works for a lead mining company, and the city began about 10 years ago when Watson purchased the vacant lot where the city held an easement, Alderman Rexel Conway said.
Watson initially owned a smaller lot, but bought adjacent property about 10 years ago, alderman Rexel Conway said. That second lot contained an easement allowing city workers to get to and from a sewage lagoon behind Watson's house. Watson has disputed the city's right to cross the property, Conway said. ''He didn't want us on the property,'' Conway said. ''We've had a couple of disputes, but it always got settled.''
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