From 2017. PBS aired it again, recently, and I'm mad all over again. What a nightmarish, absolutely incompetent clusterfuck, courtesy of our brilliant federal government.

Notice how the bullshit narrative from the on-scene spokesman changed into meaningless pandering once the truth of what the US Marshals and the FBI HRT had done, started to hit the press.

"We are a nation of laws" was the rationale of the feds for murdering a child and an innocent woman holding a baby. They just had to get this evil criminal who (gasp!) had sawed the barrels on two shotguns to be shorter than an arbitrary length specified in one of their precious laws. Sitting atop a mountain, isolated from the world, they just had to come and get him, and all the while, ignoring far greater crimes, both inside and outside of our disgusting federal government.

This was not justice, nor was it moral, nor did the technical crime committed by Randy Weaver deserve this ridiculous behavior by the government. It was and shall remain a true obscenity, and a curse on all those involved.

Allegedly it was all entrapment to make him an informant on some white power types. Still the government’s #1 target for some reason.

One of the US Marshals who was there at the time they shot a 14 year old boy in the back, wondered out loud "How did this happen?"

How did this happen?? Because YOU WERE THERE, that's how it fucking happened, snooping around like half-assed Rambos in the Goddamned trees.

The Weavers were bothering no one, were harming no one, just trying to stay out of the world. This incident was as wrong as wrong can possibly get, and we'll neither forgive nor forget.

Met Randy Weaver at a gunshow years and years ago,

he was set up near us and signing his book ( I have a copy somewhere)

very humble guy, from what I remember,

Trapped him into filing the barrel just under the legal length as I recall after he cut it. Former Green Beret. Killed his son, dog, and wife.

Just dirty and criminal.

And the assholes responsible for this criminal clusterfuck received commendations for it!

Randy Weaver Dies
In the infamous Ruby Ridge standoff, federal agents killed his wife and son.
JOE LANCASTER | 5.13.2022 9:45 AM

Randy Weaver died Wednesday, just three months shy of what would have been the 30th anniversary of the 1992 standoff that thrust him into the national spotlight. He was 74.

Born in Iowa in 1948, Weaver enlisted in the Army at age 20, near the onset of the Vietnam War. He was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he became a Green Beret, but he was never sent overseas. While he was home on leave in 1970, he reconnected with an old girlfriend, Vicki Jordison, whom he would marry the following year, after leaving the military.

Randy and Vicki had each been raised religious, but together they grew more radical. By the early 1980s, they were speaking of the endtimes, warning that the government would soon be trying to kill all Christians, and exhorting friends and family to move off the grid to escape the coming dictatorship. In 1983, the Weavers did just that. The family, which at that point included children Sara, Samuel, and Rachel, left behind a comfortable suburban life to build a modest cabin on a bluff in the northern Idaho panhandle about 40 miles south of the Canadian border. The bluff was called Ruby Ridge.

By the time they got to Idaho, the Weavers' beliefs meshed with those of the racist Christian Identity movement. During the 1980s, Randy showed up at some meetings of the white supremacist Aryan Nations organization, and at one of these meetings he met and became friends with "Gus Magisano," a motorcyclist and gun trafficker. "Gus" was actually Kenneth Fadeley, an informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF). By Weaver's telling, Fadeley repeatedly pressured him to illegally saw down two shotgun barrels; after initially refusing, Weaver, hard up for cash, acquiesced. (Fadeley would later claim at trial that Weaver had approached him.)

When Weaver was arrested, the government offered to drop the weapons charges if he would become an informant against the Aryan Nations. Weaver refused, posted bail, and holed up in the cabin. For the next 16 months, BATF agents watched the Weavers' home, with video surveillance, sniper postings, and more.

Early in the morning on August 21, 1992, three deputy U.S. marshals came onto the property in full camouflage, armed with M-16s. Sam Weaver, then 14, was hunting with Kevin Harris, a friend of the family whom Randy had taken in, when Sam's dog Striker took off after the marshals; Sam and Kevin, thinking he was chasing a deer, ran after. What happened next is in dispute, but Striker, Sam, and one of the marshals, William Degan, were killed in the ensuing encounter.

In the aftermath, the FBI took over, bringing in its elite Hostage Rescue Team. In the process, the agency severely softened its "rules of engagement" to what a congressional inquiry would later characterize as "virtual shoot-on-sight orders." With these rules in place, an FBI sniper opened fire as Randy was entering the cabin. The shot missed Randy and struck Vicki as she was holding their newest daughter, 10-month-old Elisheba. Vicki was killed instantly.

An 11-day standoff followed. After he surrendered, Randy was arrested and tried on 10 counts, including the murder of Degan, but he was acquitted of all but two minor offenses related to the original weapons charge. Subsequent congressional inquiries were scathing, reporting that the government had violated the Weavers' constitutional rights and finding "numerous shortcomings" and "inadequacies" in the government's response.

Any civil libertarian hopeful that this incident would spur meaningful changes in how the government dealt with fringe groups would have their hopes dashed in short order. In February 1993, weeks into President Bill Clinton's administration and barely six months after Randy Weaver's surrender, the BATF descended upon a compound in Waco, Texas, occupied by a religious group called the Branch Davidians. What was supposed to be a quick raid instead became a disastrous 51-day standoff; it ended with a fire that killed 80 Branch Davidians, including 21 children.

The years since have not been banner years for law enforcement either. Even before 9/11, the federal surveillance state was expanding rapidly. During Barack Obama's presidency, "fusion centers," combining federal and state law enforcement resources, kept tabs on all manner of groups as possible terrorists. Just last month, a much-vaunted prosecution of a militia for trying to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer fell apart when it came out that the militia members pushing the plan most fervently were FBI informants.

Did the Weavers harbor objectionable beliefs? Sure. (After Randy's initial arrest, Vicki sent the U.S. attorney a letter quoting Robert Mathews, the leader of racist terrorist group The Order.) But there is a big difference between thinking despicable thoughts and carrying out despicable acts. Again and again, key moments of the Weavers' story were catalyzed by government actions: the possible entrapment over a minor gun charge, the deployment of armed U.S. marshals to their property, the haphazard rules of engagement that led directly to Vicki Weaver's death. We don't remember Randy Weaver's name 30 years later because of the things he believed. We know it because he was the victim of an overreaching federal government that can be every bit as dangerous as the groups it was trying to stop.

https://reason.com/2022/05/13/randy-weaver-dies/

Troy Industries later hired Lon Horiuchi, the dirtbag who murdered Vicki Weaver.

Not sure if it's related to Troy's Horiuchi hiring, but BCM, which used to brand their name on Troy Battle Sights, eventually came up with their own sights.

I will watch the video but, the name Lon Horiuchi is forever engrained in my memory. And we have never again heard a thing about him. Doing his job yes but, an awful lot of bad judgment calls made by LE then.

You got him out before me Q.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
Troy Industries later hired Lon Horiuchi, the dirtbag who murdered Vicki Weaver.

Troy did not hire Horiuchi, they hired his spotter Dale Monroe. Then there was HS Precision who printed a glowing endorsement from Horiuchi.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
Troy Industries later hired Lon Horiuchi, the dirtbag who murdered Vicki Weaver.

You mean Women and Children First Industries?

quote:

Originally posted by airsoft guy:
You mean Women and Children First Industries?

Dang

I'm as outraged as everyone else here. I am, however, a little ignorant on Horicuchi's role and how much of it was his own initiative, incompetence or "just following orders" (likely from Larry Potts). And HTF did Horiuchi's name get totally scrubbed from the Internet? If he's really off the grid, how did Troy find him or for one second think it was a good idea to touch him with a 10' pole? The man's name is plutonium. How is he making a living? Witness Protection Program?

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
Troy Industries later hired Lon Horiuchi, the dirtbag who murdered Vicki Weaver.

Troy did not hire Horiuchi, they hired his spotter Dale Monroe. Then there was HS Precision who printed a glowing endorsement from Horiuchi.

You're right. My apologies. Troy hired Monroe. HS Precision hired Horiuchi.

quote:

Originally posted by lyman:
Met Randy Weaver at a gunshow years and years ago,

he was set up near us and signing his book ( I have a copy somewhere)

very humble guy, from what I remember,

He was at the Dulles Expo gunshow back then selling his book.

Thanks ASG. I was slowly recalling Janet Reno in this but her position in DC has left me. Did she not have the final say in sending the Feds after Randy Weaver?

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
Thanks ASG. I was slowly recalling Janet Reno in this but her position in DC has left me. Did she not have the final say in sending the Feds after Randy Weaver?

She was the AG and sent BATFE in after Koresh and the Branch Davidians. And she also presided over the Elian Gonzalez debacle.

But Ruby Ridge was August 1992, during GHWB's final months in office. Reno was Clinton's AG.

I think Bill Barr was AG then.

I saw that episode on YouTube a few months ago. HRT was given illegal rules of engagement that anyone with half a brain should have refused. If the Weavers weren’t absolutely following commands they were clear to fire. Regardless of whether they had a weapon. Everyone one of them that fired should have been prosecuted. No chance of that…