Lessons from Ruby Ridge

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Twenty years ago today, an FBI sniper shot Vicki Weaver in the head as she held her ten-month-old baby at her home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The sniper also shot her husband Randy Weaver in the back, trying to kill him. Their son was shot in the back and killed the day before by U.S. Marshals on the family’s property. One of the Marshals also died, as did a Weaver family dog killed by the officials.

This all started after years of federal investigation into Randy Weaver, beginning in the mid-1980s when Weaver’s neighbor, bitter over a land dispute, called him to the attention of various federal authorities. The most that came from these investigations was a charge, possibly true but contested, that Weaver had sold illegally sawed-off shotguns to an ATF informant, a charge with which an agent threatened Weaver if he refused to participate in another one of their investigations into third parties. Not wanting to be an ATF informant, Weaver refused. Eventually, a trial was set, but Weaver was told the wrong court date. A grand jury indicted him for failure to appear before he had a chance to show up on the date he was told.

The federal agents ambushed his property and when all was done, one official and two of the Weaver group had died and two were wounded, along with the loss of their family pet.

Some look at this incident as a sign of the modern dangers of anti-government paranoia, but this is an obscene interpretation of the facts. If anything, this is an example of the government’s paranoia run amok.

Consider:

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