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.
Let us hope he soon turns his attention to the Muslim religion instead. It's been quite a few centuries since Christians launched a jihad.
I've answered that many times.
Try to keep up.
--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.--
I read it in an article linked in this thread.
My reading skills are fine. And unlike the ideological liar Suprynowicz, I took the time to look up the original news sources that Suprynowicz drew from in writing his OPINION PIECE.
I noticed that he twisted the situation to push his agenda.
Vin writes about government 'tyranny'.
No, Vin lies and tries to promote anarchy.
Add that word to your vocabulary.
tyr·an·ny (tĭr'ə-nē) Pronunciation Key n. pl. tyr·an·nies
1. A government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power. 2. The office, authority, or jurisdiction of an absolute ruler. 3. Absolute power, especially when exercised unjustly or cruelly: "I have sworn . . . eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" (Thomas Jefferson). 4. 1. Use of absolute power. 2. A tyrannical act. 5. Extreme harshness or severity; rigor.
Yeah, I'd say that definition fits a piece of trailer trash who is trying to ensure that the rest of the townfolk did not have access to a functioning sewer system.
The easement was preexisting. And even if it were not, the Constitution specifically allows easements like this, that are necessary for Public Use.
With that, and as your reading skills improve, you will come to understand that the government isn't God.
I am quite aware that government isn't God. So your comment is way off base. I am also quite aware that God never condoned anarchy. (See: Romans 13).
Okay, I'll rephrase it: The workers were stupid to go onto the property of somebody threatening to kill them.
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.''
--Let us hope he soon turns his attention to the Muslim religion instead. --
I really doubt it. He is one anti-Christian guy.
--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.--
Naturally, when one steadies their rifle on a vehicle, they lower the body so they can see throught the sights and only the top of their head is above the vehicle.
It is amazing how far some will go to justify a position relying on the words of an anti-Christian anarchist Libertarian columnist.
He is also in conflict with news articles written at the time of the incident. Go figure.
Let's see the original news piece. This happened in 2000.
The city had an easement for the existing sewer line. They were trenching a new sewer line not covered by the existing easement. If you'd ever read an easement, they are described by footage, location and directions in relation to the property lines and landmarks. They are quite specific.
The constitution does allow for eminent domain, but this was not an eminent domain case. It's about easements and ingress/egress. Now, if you can show me where the constitution says the government can take whatever portion of somebody's land it wants with less than 24 hours notice and no due process, I'll stand down my argument.
Get the government's help in violating other people's rights. Something the government will always be more than happy to do. Immediately after you do that, some other bozo will equally engage the government's help in violating YOUR rights in the name of some other equally worthless cause.
Yep, businessmen are asking the government's help [to throw out 'trespassers'] while they violate employees rights to carry arms in vehicles.
Something our gungrabbing government bozos have always be more than happy to do.
Luis further decrees:
The question of whether or not an employer has to abide by the employee's Constitutionally protected rights has already been settled.
The answer is no.
The question of whether or not a contract employee has to abide by his owner/employer's claims of "protected rights" has already been settled.
The answer is no. -- See the 13th & 15th Amendments.
"He is one anti-Christian guy."
Maybe, maybe not, but either way, it's totally irrelevant to this case.
Vin puts the number of witches burned/killed by the Christians at about Nine million.
All that changed after 1484, when an ambitious but ethically challenged Dominican friar and embezzler by the name of Heinrich Kramer managed to convince Pope Innocent VIII to set the Holy Office of the Inquisition onto the witches, using torture to extract confessions, authorizing anonymous accusations without any right for the accused to face her accuser, and granting the soon-busy witch-hunters the rights to seize and divide the estates of the accused (who were always found guilty), an invitation to
systematic legal looting so foul that it was never allowed again in Western history ... until our current War on Drugs, of course.
As many as 9 million persons -- some doubtless practitioners of the Old
Craft, but many, especially in later years, just as doubtless falsely
accused -- were burned or hanged before the burning times faded away with a
kind of embarrassed shrug in the early 1700s.
The crime of which they were accused? Worshipping a female deity, a
goddess of the earth, and her male consort, the goat-horned male god of
fertility.
not speaking of national governments.
speaking of local governments wherein local officials become abusive. (most recent example, actions of local governments in the face of a new definition of eminent domain.
--They were trenching a new sewer line not covered by the existing easement. --
You have no evidence for this, in fact it has been disputed by several and you have been given links to those posts.
Exactly.
Yes he is, and I don't believe that it's an innocent mistake either.
Perhaps you missed this one.
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=1774791%2C659
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