Remain Free and Full of Freedom...: Ron Ewart -- The Futility of the Oregon Armed Standoff

Ron Ewart -- The Futility of the Oregon Armed Standoff

The Bundy standoff in 2014 has led to the current Oregon standoff where trigger happy Oregon State Patrol and FBI agents couldn’t wait to shoot one of the landowners at a traffic stop in what has been reported by eyewitness Victoria Sharps, who was in the white SUV, as, “red laser lights everywhere, shined on all of the occupants of the rancher’s car, and a hail of bullets from the FBI agents fired into our car where Ryan Bundy was wounded. It’s a wonder we weren’t all killed.”

See eyewitness video/audio here

The apparent summary execution of Lavoy Finicum at the traffic stop was murder according to Ms. Sharps. She stated that Lavoy. 54, a Mormon and father of 11 children and 19 grandchildren, had his hands up when the FBI agents shot him several times and while he was laying on the ground, they shot him three more times. But let’s not forget that Lavoy Finicum tried to run a roadblock.

The FBI calls Ms. Sharps’ testimony false and has released a video of the event. The FBI claims Lavoy was reaching for a gun when they shot him. Couldn’t they have at least waited to see the gun before they shot him? The FBI video doesn’t mention or show the bullet-riddled SUV. Any investigation into the shooting will likely be a whitewash.

But this begs the question of why would a father of 11 children be at a place where he could be killed? That’s irresponsible. Who will take care of the children and his ranch now that he is gone ….. the government?

By the time this article is published, the Malheur Nature Preserve occupation will probably be over. The apparent leader of the ranchers, Ammon Bundy, from his jail cell, has strongly urged the other remaining ranchers to go home, if they can get out of there without being arrested, or shot. Hopefully, they will leave peacefully and no more blood shed will occur.

There were only two possible outcomes from the Oregon standoff. The first outcome is all of the ranchers would all be shot dead by government agents. The other outcome was that they would be arrested for breaking the law. Only one was shot dead and the rest have been, or probably will be, arrested. They could serve many years in jail.

What did the ranchers hope to accomplish? Yes, they obtained national news coverage, but that coverage labeled the ranchers as thugs and terrorists. What the ranchers wanted was the Hammond Father and Son Oregon ranchers to be released from prison for a trumped up arson charge by the government giving them a five-year sentence as terrorists. That sentence was obviously over-kill by the government and was and is a travesty of justice. Nevertheless, even after the standoff is over, the Hammonds will still be in prison. So there was no win on this demand.

The ranchers’ second demand was for the federal government to cede all federal lands to the states. That demand was never going to happen in the short term but several states are attempting to regain control of federal lands in their states. We see movement along these lines in Utah, Nevada and Idaho.

Even though we sympathize with the ranchers and their cause, the occupation was futility by any other name, driven by irrational anger and frustration. The news of the occupation will be dead in a week or two, drowned out by the Presidential race. The trials of those arrested might be covered but it won’t be front-page news. The press will crucify the ranchers and when the ranchers go to jail, no one will care. The ranchers will become nameless martyrs in a long war against rising government tyranny, even though the ranchers’ honorable goal was to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

What are the lessons learned from the Oregon occupation event? The first lesson is, you have to be smarter than the government and that shouldn’t be too hard given that government employees are intellectually challenged at best. What the ranchers did was not being smarter than the government.

The second lesson is that you don’t go up against a superior force with a handful of disorganized armed citizens. That’s not only folly it can be deadly and is in direct violation of the art of war. If Americans decide they want to challenge the military power of the federal government, they had better have no less than 10,000 heavily armed, dedicated citizens with a tight organization, strong leadership, adequately supplied and funded, a detailed plan and the commitment and courage to confront government no matter what the cost. Any outright war with the 10,000 would be perceived by the public as heavy handed and dictatorial and the mask of government tyranny would finally be removed for all to see. That is probably why the government backed down at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada in 2014 because of the adverse public opinion if civilian Americans started dying in the desert at the hands of BLM agents.

Anyone should know that the government can easily over power a smaller force as they did in Oregon and the smaller force will have gained nothing out of the confrontation. But a force of 10,000 or more raises the stakes to a whole new level where the government will think twice about a war where Americans are killing other Americans, albeit that didn’t stop them in the civil war.

Government could not ignore the demands of an army of 10,000 armed and dedicated civilians who intended to punctuate their demands with guns. However, as far as we know, there is no force of an organized group of 10,000 heavily armed citizens lurking in the shadows of America right now.

Consequently, the only other way is to legally challenge the government by using the courts, like the environmentalists do, even knowing that the courts and brainwashed juries lean in favor of the government and especially the environmentalists. Such a strategy requires a non-beatable legal team and tens of millions of dollars to fund the legal battle. Yes, we can take back America in the courts, with enough money.

If the 50,000,000 or so voters that voted for Mitt Romney in the 2012 election donated $10.00 per month for a year, a war chest of $500,000,000 would be raised each month (that’s $6 Billion Dollars in a year) to fight a legal battle. Even if 10% of that 50 million would donate $10.00, that would be enough. The giant legal firms would fall all over themselves to represent this group in that they would sue their own mother if there were enough money in it for them.

But until such a legal strategy is mounted and the funds raised, nothing will change in America. As we said in our last article entitled, “America’s Collapse Is A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy – UNLESS”, “….. a critical mass of dedicated American citizens finally decide to resist government tyranny by acts of civil disobedience on a grand scale, punctuated by the threat of force if necessary.” A Boston style tea party, or even a million-man march on Washington DC, or an armed occupation at a nature preserve in Oregon to seek a redress of grievances, just doesn’t cut it in today’s America. The corrupt “system” will just swallow them up and spit them out.

But we wonder who gets it, or even whose listening, or worse, who cares?

If you care, let us know HERE.

[NOTE: The forgoing article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the opinion of NewsWithViews.com, it's employees, representatives, or other contributing writers.]

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Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property issues and author of his weekly column, "In Defense of Rural America", is the President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, (NARLO) (http://www.narlo.org) a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State, an advocate and consultant for urban and rural landowners. He can be reached for comment at info@narlo.org.

Website: www.narlo.org

E-Mail: info@narlo.org

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