Ruby Ridge was 1992, it caused quite the stink in the northern part of Idaho. Especially when the FBI brought in tracked, armored vehicles and it came to light that they had decided to murder the family in lieu of a fair trial. The feds then started closing off the roads and forcing nearby families off their property so they could have free reign to kill everyone including the daughters. The locals did not like the government anyway and started arming up to fight back. The government was forced to admit as much in court because a decent lawyer helped the remaining Weaver family members.
I was stationed in eastern Washington in 1992. What the FBI and ATF did was fucking shameful. The FBI admitted in court that they came up with a plan to ask Randy Weaver, an SF vet with Vietnam service, to join the local hate groups and spy for them. He declined the offer and had no real interest in joining anything. They then decided to "entrap him and force him to comply". Yes, the FBI literally targeted an innocent man for persecution. Being broke and in financial trouble, he accepted $10,000 to cut the barrel of a $78 dollar piece of shit H&R single barrel shotgun to 17.5 inches for their informant.
They promptly arrested him and demanded he become an informant or they would put him in prison, he refused. So, they entrapped him and then knowingly had the district court send him a "Notice to Appear" with an incorrect date and jailed him for failure to appear when he arrived in court. He went home and refused to leave his property. The FBI/ATF spent years flying recon missions over his house and creeping around his property menacing his family. The FBI and ATF published false stories in the local papers and went on the news accusing him of being a racist and a terrorist in hopes of making him a hero to people they wanted to investigate so that when they flipped him, he would be a better asset.
The two US Marshalls who were creeping on his property got "found" by a golden retriever dog and 16yo kid walking legally on their own property and they promptly murdered the kid by draining a magazine from an MP-5 into him. This got them killed. When the stand-off began the ATF and FBI issued written orders that ALL adults on the property to be murdered on sight. They promptly had a sniper shoot his wife in the head while she was holding an infant child and then taunted him via megaphone because they thought it was funny. The FBI sent a robot with a phone receiver taped to the barrel of a loaded shotgun that could be fired remotely and parked it by the door, using a megaphone to yell, "Pick up the phone Randy!" for hours, then told the press he was "refusing to speak with them".
At his trial, they admitted they planted evidence and placed evidence in spots where it would be most incriminating to Weaver and least incriminating to the government. The government literally moved shell casings and the like to make the murder of the boy seem like he attacked them. Sadly for the feds, people had seen their bullshit and made notes. He was acquitted of everything but failure to appear.
His family received a $3.5 million dollar payout from the FBI on their lawsuit and pretty much every court on earth ruled it was illegal to issue a kill order for an innocent person without due process. They did the same thing to David Koresh and his followers, went in with kill orders and burned them out. The feds then used snipers to kill anyone who fled the fire and celebrated in the ashes after their murders.
Weaver wrote a book and for years he was at local gun shows selling it and speaking to people. He outlined everything his side presented in court and did not have to lie about any of it. They moved his trial to Federal Court in Boise to get a more favorable jury of leftists and he still got acquitted. The feds also got fined for witness and evidence tampering and for needlessly delaying the trial by shipping Weaver's evidence and pretrial requests "book rate" or in some other fashion intended to deny him evidence at trial. The judge was pissed at FBI criminal behavior and made them pay Weaver's attorney costs for all of the wasted time.
I'm not a fan of Weavers politics or Koresh and his followers version of religion, but I am less of a fan of murdering government thugs killing people for no apparent reason.
There was a guy with Weaver (at the local gun show) who used to sell copies of the warrants and other court paperwork for the cost of printing, it was interesting reading. Here were the David Koresh warrant takeaways.
1. If they really wanted to arrest David Koresh he drove to town daily to pick up mail usually with one other adults and whatever kids were in the rotation to get ice cream at the store near the post office. No reason for a full-on armored assault.
2. One of the Davidians was a licensed class 3 FFL. They had every legal right to have firearms and machineguns on the property. If the ATF had questions, they had every right to simply schedule a visit and examine the dealers books and the part of the property he stored and sold firearms without a full-blown armored assault.
3. ATF idiots notified every TV news station for miles of their planned assault hours before the attack was to take place. One of these news stations called David Koresh and asked him how he felt about being assaulted and raided by the ATF? He had no idea what they were talking about and the reporter explained to him that several truckloads of armed men were coming to kill him later that day and they had been invited to film it.
4. If you look at the video, the ATF kills most of the ATF guys who died and wounded most of the rest.
