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.
Here's another one of your heros.
They’d been hassling Carl Drega, retired carpenter, for years. He was cited for not finishing a tarpaper outbuilding on his property “soon enough.” He was cited for shifting rocks and fill to rebuild the shoreline of his property -- along the Connecticut River in upstate New Hampshire -- after it washed out in a flood. (Authorities claimed he didn’t have the proper permit. The state announced it would send in contractors to “put the shoreline back the way it was” -- precisely what Drega claimed he had done -- and bill Drega for the costs, however high.)
Drega tried to fight them in court, and to get the Boston Globe interested in his plight. But he was an unsophisticated man, and no one paid any attention to his rambling letters until that hot day in August 1998 when two local cops pulled him over in a supermarket parking lot for having “rust holes in the bed of his pickup.”
Then they started to pay attention.
Carl Drega shot and killed the two cops, drove downtown in one of the police cars, found the part-time judge who had backed many of the actions against him, and killed her too. Then, for good measure, he killed the editor of the local newspaper, who was foolish enough to try and tackle Drega while unarmed.
Carl Drega died later that day, in a shoot-out with police.
In San Leandro, California -- about
See #26,
Sick, but funny.
--So, you admit it? You have no idea why the Second Amendment exists?--
So you admit you are a lawless anarchist?
Small claims court may or may not have covered all your loss but you don't need a lawyer.
--On the other hand, he warned them that he would kill them if they came on his property. Apparently they accepted that risk, so in a way, they committed suicide...--
Sounds like that 'she was responsible for being raped because ...' arguments.
In the name of Allah we good people must do terrible things to keep the Zionist and infidels out of our lands so that the goverments will listen to us.
I agree.
Always expect to read or hear about somebody going postal at a county council meeting....especially in big government blue states.
Cut your losses.
Statements like yours do nothing but help the anti-gunners.
Yes, but that's why we fought the First Revolution and the actions/attitudes of arrogant, greedy public officials is why there will be a Second.
My reading of the article is that the Land Owner had been fighting the imposition of an existing easement for a number of years and the town was imposing a new easement that did not exist when he purchased his land.
It seems to me that the town handled this very poorly. The town served the papers for the new easement early in the morning to the wife (they probably new that he would not be home) and started work the very same day.
The town apparently did not want to give this man time to take any legal action to prevent the start of work on the new sewer line.
In my mind the town knowing this man would not take this issue lightly tried to roll over him with a surprise attack. They knew he worked nights and would not be able to get a court injunction in time to stop the start of construction.
The guy was operating on lack of sleep that and his long running anger over took his patients.
I don’t condone his actions but like his fellow townspeople I understand him.
Addendum: Seems as though something could have been worked out in this situation, though.
In my opinion, the whole reason we have the Second Amendment is that sometimes the King's Men need killing, and the people need to have the ability to do so.
~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.
I don't want to go so far as to justify what this particular man did. But let's look at the general case, rather than the specific --
No, as specifically, -- in this case, -- you cannot compare the workingmen to "SS soldiers".
I served & I'm well aware of the Nuremberg codes. -- They don't apply.
My hero. (((sigh)))
I wonder if the local government pulled back on their enforcement of stupid laws immediately after this man lost his mind.
This article, like so many others, is long on emotion and short on facts.
There was more in another article but not much more. Something about clogs and his tie-in to the county system.
LOL! Guess a lot of Freepers can't find the diplomatic way to show support for this misguided soul without appearing unbalanced and extreme.
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