Seeing middle aged men pretending they are armed revolutionaries is just a failed message. If they did a non violent protest - occupied a federal building non violently - then if the govt uses violence on them they win. If you go in armed and stating you are willing to fight then when the govt shoots at you the level of public sympathy will be low for the protestors.
Again, this is a comment on the tactics and not on who was in he right.
My comment is only that they killed a guy and there was no reason to.
He was going to a town hall meeting that included the sheriff.
Why was there a confrontation in the first place? Why not — as with Waco — just back off and give it a year or two. Who cares that someone is camping in a firefighter’s shack in an Oregon forest?
Leave them alone. If they’ve got a burr in the butt and feel they MUST get them, then WAIT until they are entirely alone, entirely unarmed and then do the deed.
This was negligent homicide in my opinion.
” comment on the tactics “
They actually were putting their message out. They were doing town halls w/the locals. That’s where they were going when arrested.
However, the mistake was the jurisdiction where they chose to do this.
OWS and BLMatter are run by pros advocating communism, so they pick towns run by folks sympathetic to their cause. Not so for the ranchers.
Here, you had a eco-Nazi, dike, lib governor who was haranguing the feds to get them out of there - “We need some muscle here!”
“Seeing middle aged men pretending they are armed revolutionaries is just a failed message. If they did a non violent protest - occupied a federal building non violently - then if the govt uses violence on them they win. If you go in armed and stating you are willing to fight then when the govt shoots at you the level of public sympathy will be low for the protestors.”
And if our founding fathers heeded your most wise advice ,which just so happens was the rant of the “conformist
and loyalist” parties at the time, the United States of America
wouldn’t exist today. Think about that.
Was their protest violent? Other than legally bearing arms, did they commit acts of violence? Declarations that they were prepared to defend themselves are neither violence nor threats of violence, insofar as an individual has an inherent right of self-defense.