Timeline: 1992
Ruby Ridge (August 21 - 31, 1992)
Era: Twentieth Century
Year: 1992
Campaign: n/a
Conflict: n/a
Country: USA
Region: Idaho
Combatants: The Weaver family, US Marshals, FBI, ATF
Commander(s): Randy Weaver; Deputy US Marshals Art Roderick, Larry Cooper, Bill Degan, USMS Associate Director of Operations Duke Nukem sorry Smith, FBI SAC Eugene Glenn, SWAT Team Leader Gregory Sexton
Reason: Refusal by Weaver to appear in court on firearms charges; fears he and his family were stockpiling weapons
Objective: Disarm the family and deliver Randy Weaver into custody
Casualties (approx): 3 (plus one dog)
Objective Achieved? Yes
Victor: US Government forces
Legacy: Further distrust of FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies, the inexorable rise of domestic terrorism in America
Hands Off My Weapons: The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” - Second Amendment to the US Constitution, December 15 1791
The meaning of the above has been argued and debated, and not only by scholars but ordinary people, for over two hundred years now, and there’s still disagreement. Some maintain the Second Amendment refers only to arms for militias, others contend it confers a god-given (or at least, founding-fathers-given) right upon them to amass as many deadly weapons as they see fit to possess. Republican politicians and lawmakers, judges and associations such as the National Rifle Association (NRA, not to be confused with the IRA!) continue to fight and lobby fiercely to protect the rights of the citizens to bear arms, while deaths from shootings in America continue to climb, and mass shootings are becoming more and more a regular occurrence.
The debate is too hotly contested on both sides and has too much political capital to ever be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction, but for an ignorant Irishman like me I think it’s vital to look into the reason why the Amendment was written, what it was supposed to mean, and how it has been often misinterpreted or even abused in the United States, especially most recently.
Written, as you can see above if you’re not an American and know this already, in 1791, only fourteen years after the American colony declared its independence and eight after that independence was finally won and recognised by Great Britain, the Amendment seems to have been couched in terms that would allow states to raise armed militias to defend themselves against what is termed “oppressive governments”. Quite how you define that is very much open to interpretation: surely the administration led by Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020 was an oppressive government, and just as surely, those on the red side of the nation see the government of his successor in the same way? Surely indeed, for did not Trump supporters, QAnon members and other assorted paramilitary crazies descend on the Capitol building on January 6, intent on wresting power from the lawmakers in a
coup d’etat?
To my own, completely uninformed mind, the idea of even including such a phrase in the Constitution sounds like it was a bad one, as it was obviously going to be abused and cited as reason for various acts of violence, as it was indeed in the case of
Miller vs Texas, 1889, when Franklin Miller, charged in the shooting death of a Texas cop with an illegal firearm, protested that his Second Amendment rights had been violated (never mind that he had committed murder!) - obviously he got nowhere and was sentenced to death. Or that of
Presser v Illinois, in which Herman Presser, having paraded his paramilitary group through the streets argued that his arrest was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. He actually won his case. The landmark
District of Columbia vs Heller decision as recently as 2008 ratified for the first time the right of private citizens to own weapons, whether or not they were connected with any militia, and overturned the state’s ban on handguns.
In general, it seems, the tide of public opinion may flow this way and that, rising whenever a new outrage such as the all-too-familiar school shooting, or a mass killing of any kind occurs, then receding quietly, is almost almost shouted down by those in whose interests it is to keep the possession and use of guns legal and a basic American right. I believe the US is the only country in the world to have such a right enshrined in its laws. It isn’t too hard to understand why any challenge to restrict the sale or possession of guns is doomed to fail, particularly with the Supreme Court now so right-leaning, but mostly because of the revenue such sales bring in for major corporations, the work of their lobbyists on the Hill, and in the end, the fact that once people have got used to having something - and having a right to it - it’s incredibly difficult to dispossess them of it.
But it should be remembered that the Amendment, like the very Constitution itself, was written at a time when the USA had just won its first war, and its independence, and so was set down with a view to preventing the loss of that freedom by way of another war, whether from without or within. As time passed, apart from actual times of war, it should probably have been taken note of that the need - not the desire, but the need - for weapons to be possessed by individuals had passed, and with the merging of the Western frontier with the rest of America, the ending of the Civil War should have negated that right. But I say this as a non-American, and I expect many of you are burning effigies of me as I write, and you’re probably correct: I know nothing of American life, your traditions and your entitlements, though I am learning about your history. What I say is a mere comment, passed most likely in ignorance, and not to be taken as any sort of commentary on the use of guns in America.
What can’t be denied though, other than all the mass shootings that have taken place over the last fifty years or so, is that some major incidents have occurred where the government has literally tried to - and in some cases, succeeded in doing so - disarm people they believed were stockpiling weapons for use against them, or against their people. We all know of the siege at Waco, but there is another one, just before that, which this article is concerned with, and the above is more a preface to try to frame the narrative that will now follow.
Repent! For the End is Nigh! Randy Get Your Gun
When his wife Vicki began having visions of the coming end of the world in 1978, Iowa factory worker Randy Weaver moved his family to an isolated plot of land he had purchased at Ruby Ridge, Naples, Idaho, intending to live a survivalist existence there and cutting themselves off from the “wicked” world. Randy and his wife built a cabin where they lived with their four children and dog. One year after moving there, the Weavers had a dispute over land with a local man, Terry Kinnison, who lost the court case and was ordered to pay reparations to Randy. He then got in touch with the FBI and Secret Service, and the county sheriff, claiming the Weavers had a cache of automatic weapons on their land and that Randy had threatened to kill President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and the Governor of Idaho. The feds investigated these claims, interviewed Weaver but found no evidence to support them. However he was now on their radar.
The Secret Service had been told that Weaver was a member of the white supremacist organisation Aryan Nations, a charge he denied, though he was seen attending rallies and one of his associates did belong to a Christian white supermacist group, The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord. Weaver filed an affidavit claiming he was being set up, that his enemies (presumably Kinnison) were trying to create conditions which would force or encourage the FBI to storm their compound, Waco-like, and kill them. They also wrote to Reagan, saying that if he got any threatening letters purporting to be from the Weavers, they had not sent them. This proved to be a bad move, as the letter was used as evidence later in their trial.
The ATF - Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms - got involved in 1986, when Weaver attended his first Aryan Nations Congress, and became linked with a man who later turned out to be an informant for the ATF, and after dealing with him over the next three years, sold him a sawn-off shotgun. It’s odd, but it appears both the ATF and the FBI had CIs (Confidential Informants) working undercover at Aryan Nations, and the FBI mole, perhaps in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the leaders and throw suspicion off himself, or perhaps as yet another example of the often fierce rivalry between the two agencies, warned Weaver he was dealing with an ATF spy. Weaver was arrested and charged with possession of the guns, but the ATF could not make a charge of selling them stick. Indicted by a Grand Jury, Weaver was arrested by stealth, the ATF believing it would be too dangerous to approach him on his home turf, and he was advised of the charges and released on bail.
Oops! A Catalogue of Errors: Justice Goes Off the Rails
From here on in, you can make up your own mind whether the ATF and the courts manipulated the circumstances to ensure Weaver missed his court date, whether they were incompetent and there was a lack of communication, or whether it was just bad luck, but whatever the case, the trial date was changed due to a federal holiday. Weaver’s attorney was advised but not the accused himself, and the attorney spent some time trying to get in touch with him, but as Weaver had not given him a phone number (given their reluctance to trust even electricity, it’s doubtful whether he even had one) he was unable to contact him. A letter was sent to Weaver, but in an absolutely incredible piece of oversight or laziness, the date was shown as March, not February 20. When the February trial date arrived, Weaver of course did not show. A bench warrant was issued for his arrest.
The judge doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility that Weaver, having received - or at least, having been sent - a letter with the wrong date might have been waiting till then to show up. I mean, given his relationship with the ATF he probably had no intention of attending at all, but nevertheless, everyone except the judge seems to have allowed for the possibility. He refused to rescind the arrest warrant, and so events were set in motion that could not be stopped.
The US Marshals, perhaps exercising a bit more commonsense and no doubt worried about kicking off an armed confrontation if they went to arrest the guy and it turned out all to have been a misunderstanding, delayed executing the arrest warrant until the date on Weaver’s letter, March 20. However in another case of classic incompetence or lack of communication - or maybe a rush to judgement - the US Attorneys Office called a grand jury on March 14, apparently unaware that the date for Weaver to turn up had been extended, and issued an indictment for failure to appear. The US Marshals now had no choice but to execute the warrant, and we’ll never know if Weaver intended to turn up six days later, though as I say it seems doubtful.
Nevertheless, that was not the end of the dark comedy of errors. Back before he had been arrested, the ATF had tried to turn Weaver by using the threat of a prosecution against him for the weapons he had sold their informant, but he had told them where to stick it. This information was not passed on to the USMS by the ATF, and further, his attorney had made a major blunder by warning him that if he lost his case, he would also lose his land and his children. I mean, it wasn’t the kind of thing to encourage a man who was already deeply suspicious of the government, and the world at large, to turn up and have his fate decided by twelve good men and true, now was it? You can see where the conspiracy theories begin. Did they want to kill the guy?
It might seem like I’m on Weaver’s side, as if I have sympathy for him. I’m not. From what I read about him, he wasn’t a particularly nice guy, and if he was into white supremacist groups he’s not someone I would want to know. However, every man and woman in America deserves justice and due process of law, and should be assured of a fair trial, and here I just don’t think that was the case with Weaver. As far as I can see, the ATF got miffed when he refused to be a snitch for them, and started building the strongest case they could against him. When that failed to pass as they would have liked, either there was an amazing string of ****-ups and bad coincidences, as detailed above, or there was a concerted effort to deny him justice, and to increase the severity of the charges against him. From being tried for a relatively simple infringement of gun laws, he was now considered a fugitive, and, given the information received by ATF, armed and dangerous. It was all building towards something that would take on a life of its own, and take three lives before it was spent.
As Weaver refused to come quietly, barricaded into his cabin with his family, the US Marshals tried to negotiate with him, to get him to surrender without bloodshed. From March 5 till March 12 1991 they talked to him through intermediaries, but on March 12 negotiations ceased, on the orders of the DAO, and the US Marshals began making plans to take him by force. They set up surveillance on the Ridge and watched the family; Weaver surely knew he was under watch and viewed all people and vehicles that approached with suspicion and hostility, the former at least not unfounded.
Four years later, the role of the USMS, the ATF and the FBI would come under severe criticism by the Department of Justice, which maintained that there were many inconsistencies in the profile put together about Randy Weaver and the supposed threat he posed, and that the people used to talk to him were as radical as he was said to be, if not more so, and therefore had a vested interest in responding with hostility to any suggestions of a peaceful end to the crisis. In short, they probably were rooting for Randy, and wanted him to go out in a blaze of glory, whether that was his own intention or not. A report in 1995 stated that “The assumptions of federal and some state and local law enforcement personnel about Weaver—that he was a Green Beret, that he would shoot on sight anyone who attempted to arrest him, that he had collected certain types of arms, that he had "booby-trapped" and tunneled his property—exaggerated the threat he posed.”
Things quickly began to fall apart. A helicopter that flew over Weaver’s land - not a military or police one, but one owned by a news network which handled the talk show host Geraldo Rivera’s television programme - was said to have been fired on by Randy, though this was later disputed by everyone including the US Marshals AND the pilot. Nevertheless, with absolutely zero evidence that any shots had been fired, and with the testimony of the pilot completely to the contrary, the charge was entered in Randy Weaver’s indictment that he had fired on the helicopter. Operations were suspended for three months, but it was only delaying the tragic inevitable.