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.
He owned it - not the state.
If there was an easement on the property when he bought it, it *is* "the state's." It's called doing due dilligence when you buy the property.
If the easement was procured after he bought it, a few things would have happened that he would have been well aware of before they just "showed up one morning."
-- I certainly don't agree with shooting them, but could the workmen and the cop not see that this guy had been pushed over the line?--
He had gone back into his house and later came back out UNARMED. He then pulled his rifle out of his truck and fired from a protected position behind it. They probably didn't know what was happing till they felt the bullets.
--If there was an easement on the property when he bought it, it *is* "the state's." It's called doing due dilligence when you buy the property.--
The easement was on the deed when he bought it.
He had been arguing for years that they couldn't use the easement.
Hopefully you'll brush up on your reading skills as you advance your membership here. Welcome.
Vin writes about government 'tyranny'. Add that word to your vocabulary. With that, and as your reading skills improve, you will come to understand that the government isn't God.
No. As I said, the govm's fundamental justification is to protect rights. Where right is contested, they are the arbitors.
"U.S. v. Cruikshank", Lloyd Corporation v. Tanner, Thornton v. Caldor
None of these apply. What does apply is the right of vehicle title. The employer must limit parking lot decisions to the presence of the vehicle, nothing else.
"The question of whether or not an employer has to abide by the employee's Constitutionally protected rights has already been settled."
No. Find a health and safety law, that the concept of negligence doesn't apply, or that an employer can discriminate in hiring based on race, creed, or nationality. Those are sufficient to show that Constitutional rights are not to be violated. The cases you listed arecorrect, except for Cruishank, which is repugnant to the Constitution and which Congress has repeatedly violated.
Do you realize how utterly stupid that comment is? Maureen Dowd is also a "nationally syndicated columnist", and that doesn't make her opinion any more intelligent.
Suprynowicz, like Dowd, plays fast and loose with the truth and pushes an ideological agenda. Just because you agree with Suprynowicz's anarchist agenda, doesn't mean that he is any less guilty of being a piece of garbage than Dowd is.
--Hopefully you'll brush up on your reading skills as you advance your membership here. Welcome.--
I hope you will also.
--Vin writes about government 'tyranny'. Add that word to your vocabulary. With that, and as your reading skills improve, you will come to understand that the government isn't God.--
Vin also blathers about the tyranny of the Christian Church.
Agree 100%.
Not only all that you said, but the workers were stupid to go onto the property of somebody pointing a gun at them. Who risks their life to trench a sewer?
The city knew there would be trouble, or they wouldn't have sent the cop. That tells me they knew they were doing this guy wrong and just wanted to throw their weight around. The cowardly cop was as inept as the city he works for.
--Not only all that you said, but the workers were stupid to go onto the property of somebody pointing a gun at them. --
You apparently are ignoring my post and making this up.
-- That tells me they knew they were doing this guy wrong --
How were they doing this guy wrong?
Are you going to answer my #369 to you that points out that the law you cited clearly doesn't address the issue or support your claim?
It does address the issue. But you are apparently satisfied to not post facts but continue to make up things and post them as facts. I have called you on several but you have provided no source for your information.
Your link is to an empty dialogue reply box.
I read it in another article linked to on this thread.
Try to keep up.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1774791/posts?page=260#260
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1774791/posts?page=222#222
--I read it in another article linked to on this thread. --
Neato. Care to provide the link?
LOL!
There was a reason the city sent a cop with the workers, right? So Watson tells them he'll kill them if they come on his property, right? Then he disappears into his house as they come onto his property, right? Did the cop or the workers think he was going to just stay in, pour a cup of coffee and read the paper or watch a ball game on TV?
The article doesn't say he hid or was in a protected position behind the truck; merely that he steadied the rifle on the truck after taking it out of the truck. Quit making stuff up.
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