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.
--Just wait until I get out and seek public office. Then I'll get back to you.--
I just hope you one of your anarchist buddies doesn't put the bead on you while you are mayor.
--And if you live in a state where that decision is binding, then you just get screwed?--
We are not a socialist country. You are free to move to any state and county of your choosing.
Awesome Post volunbeer. And thank you for your service.
My thanks too.
--I'm sure you're a baby boomer how is saddling my generation with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security debts.--
Bitter toward your parents?
Sorry, I kinda posted while in a bad mood. In fact, as I hit the "send" button, I knew I shouldn't have.
I was hoping that the comment would get lost among the hundreds of others in this thread. Obviously it didn't.
I simply see the slow creep of tyranny taking place around the globe, and in this country as well. I fear for generations later who will not know how well we had it. Sometimes, I react foolishly. I did not mean to come off as anarchist, but it seems I did. I just don't like totalitarianism. We've fought enough wars against it to fail, both at home and abroad.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for the military before, and those serving now. Which is why I am so defensive of the even the smallest violation of liberty, even if it is some man defending his property from a alderman with a backhoe.
My apologies for being an ass, though. And thank you for putting me in my place.
Clarification accepted. You were not an ass. However, I still take exception to your latest reference to the backhoe driver infringing on Garry's rights. The backhoe driver was executing a lawful repair of a county owned facility on the county easement. The homeowner violated the backhoe driver's rights. The homeowner was nothing more than a misguided soul that lost it one morning and took out two innocent people.
"Those who have better ideas in a democracy should not have to shoot people to promote them."
Y'know, you may have inadvertently hit on a piece of the overall problem. Our form of government isn't supposed to be a Democracy but a Republic. Democracies usually become Socialistic because of the "greater good" idea.
Maybe if we had a real Republic and a Republican form of government, as is "promised" in the Constitution, fewer people would feel the need to shoot civil servants to make their point.
--Maybe if we had a real Republic and a Republican form of government, as is "promised" in the Constitution,--
What do you mean?
--fewer people would feel the need to shoot civil servants to make their point.--
This guy went over the edge. He is no hero. He was a murderer, plain and simple.
Or maybe if we had real republicans it would'nt be an issue.
;)
You've been up all night. Why don't you go back to sleep.
An easement is a piece of land. You don't have an easement for a sewer line, you have an easement for a piece of land that will contain a sewer line. A 10 foot easement can contain several pipes, power lines, etc. Existing easements are routinely used to place new lines, which is simply common sense.
Such as the NRA's "guns at the workplace" push to further erode property rights.
Please, don't try to pick a fight with me over guns and/or where/when they can be carried and by whom. Neither of us would or could convince the other to change his mind, so we'd just be wasting bandwidth.
We agree.
Thanks.
In your opinion, is the NRA a Second Amendment organization, or is it a lobbyist for gun manufacturers?
I've been reading opinions on Second Amendment sites on the net lately, and a good number of them don't seem to think a whole lot of the NRA.
The 13th. Amendment has nothing to do with this, there nothing involuntary going on here...
I have a job to fill, we discuss the job, I inform you of all pertinent aspects of the job, including parking lot regulations that may or may not include gun restrictions, and you either accept the job (with all policies and workplace regulations) or decline it.
No slavery or involuntary anything going on.
Neither does the 15th.
You're really grasping at straws.
At will employment likened to slavery?
You're such a Marxist.
So you're on a thread where people are discussing the ability to carry guns, but you don't want to talk about it?
The NRA suffers from the same malady that infects nearly all large organizations: Overinflated opinion of their own worth. Kinda like government.
I'm a member but only because my gun-club requires it. I consider my yearly NRA dues part of my club dues.
See...we probably agree on this.
What's probably going to happen, if it isn't happening already, is that by picking this unecessary fight with business owners, the NRA will actually HURT the RTKBA by involving a whole lot of soccer moms into the question of when and where guns should be allowed.
Once the combination of soccer moms, liberals, and government gets rolling NONE of our rights will be safe.
No.
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