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.
You got that right. Ours is in the midst of pushing ~way~ to far, imho.
When the men of the Boston Tea Party threw tea into Boston Harbor they did not first shoot the men of the merchant ships and the dock workers.
LOL! That 'honorable' man would see himself on FOXNEWS LIVE surrounded by SWAT snipers.
And, if Janet Reno were AG, chances are he'd be burned alive.
In some places in the west, people have no control over their mineral rights on their land, and the state just sells those rights and the next morning crews are setting up oil rigs, paying you only a tiny fraction of the proceeds.
In many ways this country would have to be a disappointment to the wise people who founded it. Just recently, they changed an environmental law that prevented from over-excited enviro-freaks from pouncing on your property and calling it a wetland area just because of a hard rain. The new law stipulates that the water must be long standing and naturally sustained, in order to fall into protected wetland category.
As an old 'scout' I can appreciate some attention to the environment, but too many times these people go too far. Thats what you get when you elect the Clintonistas or any of their kind.
Well, I wish he had sued them or something.
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.
No excuse for this man.some people are natural born cranks looking for a reason to do something stupid. The city had easement rights and began the work they were entitled to.
I have easements on my place for county road, telephone, city water and railroad and electricity. I have had no problems with any on anything. Now, if I could get a sewer easement I wouldn't have to worry about a septic tank failure.
The failure here was the policeman who obviously failed to protect the working men.
We know it's not a RKBA issue. Nobody said it was.
Nowhere is there an indication that the city tried to negotiate or pay for an easement. They just took it. If I decided I wanted to use your property, your private road, to get to part of my adjacent property, and I had no easement or my easement was insufficient, do you think you would just let me do whatever I wanted and use your road or drive across your property without some sort of financial compensation and your approval? What if I had five kids and ten grand kids (teenagers) all with cars, driving back and forth constantly on your road or across your property? Ya' think you might want some compensation for maintenance and usage? Ya' think I might be trespassing, repeatedly and egregiously, if I did so without your approval?
Yeah, the people need municipal infrastructure as you say, but let them pay private landowners for it when it's needed.
Your Marxist "for the greater good" BS is just that - more Marxist drivel. I don't know how you can consider yourself a conservative or a member of a "free" republic and think the government takes supremacy over something as fundamental as private property ownership rights.
IF the powers that be had respect for the peons who pay their meal tickets, such things may not occur as often as they do. If the powers that be don't begin to show more respect for the unwashed masses, there may be worse to come.
Respect.
It's an awesome concept.
The property owner was most likely past the tea throwing stage... He probably had tried that already.
Killing the workers was extreme and unnecessary. There are municipalities in this country where "city hall" only understands the extremes.
Unfortunately it is not the government that has to listen to us it is the people.
The government will never listen to us until we have a large and vocal minority (fortunately we do not need a majority).
We have to convince enough people that everybody’s rights are at risk with this kind of government action. Education is the key (as always).
One thing I will also add is that we must take a lesson from the left here and find a way to appeal to people’s emotion. The left has been very good at this and we need to learn how to do this as well.
Unless we can get people to feel this man’s pain they will just see him a deranged lunatic and not as the oppressed common man pushed beyond the limits of his ability to endure government’s impositions’.
--We know it's not a RKBA issue. Nobody said it was.--
ClearCase did.
That's 'air rights'.
BTW, Frances Gary Powers or KAL700 mean anything to you?
--Your Marxist "for the greater good" BS is just that - more Marxist drivel. I don't know how you can consider yourself a conservative or a member of a "free" republic and think the government takes supremacy over something as fundamental as private property ownership rights.--
Conservatives believe in establishing governments in order to provide for a better community and to protect property rights using laws established by their elected representatives. Anarchists believe is shooting those that try to enforce the laws.
I understand completely why the guy did it.
The families of the maintenance workers and the cop should sue the municipality for using them as chumps and sending them into a dangerous situation.
Sadly, citizen responses like Watson's need to happen more often, only it should be the scumbag politicians who are held accountable for their greed and tyranny, not their minions. Watson did what many, many people only wish they had the guts to do.
As government grows more and more corrupt, I expect to see more incidents like this one.
Bingo..
We are all "fettered" by our Laws of the Land. -- Far to many laws of course..
LOL!
When I was a little boy, there was a man living across the street who had a lawn 'to die for'.
He took our baseball on more than one occasion when it rolled onto his lawn or into his flower bed.
I could 'see' Mr. Bogamil killing somebody over a shitty ditch. ;^)
I think you missed this part:
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.
If I were the family member of one of the dead men, I'd be suing the city big time. They'd end up paying a great deal more than if they'd just purchased an easement the way they should have in the first place, or purchased an easement from someone else more willing and located the sewer line elsewhere. I would win. The city tried to steamroll over this guy with notice so short as to be meaningless and placed them in a highly charged situation with a man known to stand in objection to the city's actions. They were negligent, even if they did send a deputy. In fact, the fact that they sent the deputy indicates they knew there'd be trouble. If they sent my husband into that situation, I'd be pissed beyond words at their gross stupidity.
When are taxpayers going to learn that when the government does something foolish and ends up paying out high-dollar damages and litigation costs, it comes out of their pocket? When are they going to match that concept to the ballot box?
Umm, you seem to have a strange view of 'property'. Property has nothing to do with soil.
And if 'air rights' are different from 'property rights', then where does it start and stop? 1 foot off the ground? 5 ft? 6 ft? 8 ft? 10 ft? 20 ft? 100 ft? 1000ft?
You see the problem here, you can't really stop. And it's no more reasonable to say this guy had the right to shoot at someone for putting in a sewer pipe (below ground) then he does to shoot at a plane flying overhead.
Actually, that's not an opinion. That's a fact.
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