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.
--Why would a man dig up his yard if there wasn't a problem?--
I didn't say there was no problem. But it makes it very difficult for the county to fix the problem when one will not let them on the easement to fix the problems.
"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?" wku man's post to UpAllNight, #495.
Post #499 was from another FReeper altogether, screen name of Chances Are.
Since you're new, I'll give you a little help in navigating the forum. Click on the "View Replies" button to see replies to a particular post. When one clicks on my post #495, one sees that your response in #503 was an irrelevant question ("was it clogged"), and therefore, I logically infer that you are merely trying to divert the debate.
Give it a rest. You're starting to remind me of the Black Knight in The Search for the Holy Grail. "Come back here, I'll bite your legs off" and so forth. Therefore, in the spirit of King Arthur, "we'll call it a draw". Good-bye.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
--Would I do the same if I were in the Missouri man's boots? I'd have to think long and hard about it, but unfortunately, he didn't have the opportunity to think, because they just showed up on his property to start digging. --
He had YEARS to think.
--When one clicks on my post #495, one sees that your response in #503 was an irrelevant question ("was it clogged"), and therefore, I logically infer that you are merely trying to divert the debate.--
Please alter my post and put it in quotes. Thank you.
-- "we'll call it a draw". Good-bye.--
Good try. I ruin the whole basis for your argument by pointing out that you made it up and you want to exit with a 'draw'?
So your argument is that if you can manage to get your employer's property in your vehicle parked on his property, your employer has lost his right to recover his property because he can't search your vehicle?
Absurd.
When you can provide a title to the lands and structures to that property, then you can make the rules on it, until that point, your access to it is controlled by the owner.
No one is forcing an employee to accept a job where they feel that their rights are being violated, or that their life is in danger as a result of the workplace policies, so there are no rights violations here. If you are not in agreement on the way a property owner exercises their rights, then don't enter their property...you don't have a right to be on it to begin with.
You are demanding a non-existent right...the right to be on someone else's property on your terms and against theirs.
You simply don't have that right.
You know, people said the same thing about emminent domain. And the court betrayed the constitution. What's the next step?
I assume you mean the Kelso decision. Many people did take their complaints to their representatives and several states have passed laws or amended their constitutions that nullify Kelso in their states.
Nor does administrating our laws give you godlike powers over your peers.--
What is "godlike" about trying to use a legal easement in the maintenance of the system for which that easement was legally granted?
From what I've read, the local officials were being absolutist's about their powers. So was Watson. -- Obviously, you back up the officials. --- I back up Constitutional restraints on ALL absolutists.
OBTW, you keep ducking my earlier concern where you called me a gun-grabber for agreeing with the GA bill.
You imagine a lot of weird things. I don't 'duck', I just ignore obsessive behavior.
Does that mean you have retracted your support for the GA bill?
We went over this not long ago:
UpAllNight wrote:
tpaine -- THIS ISSUE is much bigger than parking lots. -- I agree.
But that was the issue you put to me originally and the one we were discussing. Are you now disagreeing with the GA law? Are you saying that the GA law which is consistent with my position is a gun-grabbing law? I thought you agreed with it?
You seem obsessed with your vision of what the GA bill meant to achieve. -- Why is that, considering that you agree:
"--The issue is carrying a firearm in your private vehicle for protection of yourself and your family when you are traveling to and from work, to and from shopping and to and from any place law-abiding citizens normally go in the course of daily routines. --
-- 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?
Asked and answered way back in the thread. Get a new obsession.
--Asked and answered way back in the thread. Get a new obsession.--
I assume you are referring to where you agreed with the GA bill and have not changed that position. You are aware that the bill allows employers to prohibit employees from bringing weapons onto the employers' private property. Is that why you called me a gun grabber for supporting the GA bill?
You continue to confuse restrictions on government with restrictions on individuals.
You don't have to agree to allow your employer to search your vehicle on the way into their property at all, then again, your employer can deny you access to their property if they don't get to search your vehicle.
Here's how that plays out:
Employer: Hello, I need you to open your trunk and so that I can search for guns before you access my parking lot, as you may recall allowing me to search your vehicle on the way and out of the property is a condition of employment.
You: No, you can't search my car.
Employer: Then you can't enter the property.
What are you going to do at that point?
"--The issue is carrying a firearm in your private vehicle for protection of yourself and your family when you are traveling to and from work, to and from shopping and to and from any place law-abiding citizens normally go in the course of daily routines. --
That was not the issue YOU raised with me. Seems you are changing your tune away from the "employees' right to bring a weapon to work with him."
--What are you going to do at that point?--
You have to ask after all the reponses on this thread? Why of course, you pull out your SKS and shoot the minimum wage, 59 year old guard.
But owning a gun does?
Absurd.
--But owning a gun does?--
Yes. Particular if they are unarmed and you ambush them from behind your truck.
You and I are discussing two private citizens interacting on a piece of privately owned land. Not a private citizens ans a representative of the government interacting over an easement.
--We've written a Constitution to guide us about abusing power. Amazing how so few of us admit we are ALL bound to honor the document.--
Where did the county violate the constitution?
--Thanks luis, you've made my point.--
Uh no. The county had LEGAL permission to be on the easement. The nutcase was trying to illegally revoke their right by denying them access.
Rather, making his living as a nationally syndicated columnist. And you are posting that he is a piece of garbage on a free board. Hmmm... Thank you for your opinion, I'll rank it with the ones above the urinal at the local library.
Loss prevention programs can include search of the employee, or any containers in the employees possession when exiting an area containing property, but not the vehicle, wnless there is probable cause.
"No one is forcing an employee to accept a job where they feel that their rights are being violated, or that their life is in danger as a result of the workplace policies, so there are no rights violations here."
That nonsense went out beginning with old common law. Biblically, violating anyone's rights was never permitted by God. Around the beginning of the 19th century, the States and the feds began to protect the rights of employees against arbitrary rights violations made possible by the employer's advantage of soverenty over the operation. Since the govm't fundamental justification for existence is to protect rights, their action on behalf of anyone whose right is being infringed w/o sufficient justification is proper.
"You are demanding a non-existent right...the right to be on someone else's property on your terms and against theirs."
Ridiculous. Whose name appears on the vehicle title?
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