Bundy Ranch: #GetOffMyLawn

Clive Bundy (with Constitution in his pocket)

What happened at Bundy Ranch over the weekend?

The first reports I heard informed me that the feds were trying to run a man off his land, and private militia showed up to push back the Feds.

And the Feds fled..

Another win for federalism.

Was this outcome justified, though?

What is going on?

In 1993, the Bureau of Land Management targeted the region in Nevada, where Bundy and his ancestors had been grazing their cattle for generations. The federal government also charges that Bundy owes $1 million in grazing fees.

Because of his prior claims to the land, Bundy stopped paying grazing fees for his cattle.

Following court orders and other legal sanctions, the Bureau of Land Management sent in troops to round up the cattle.

Citing federal overreach into a state matter, private militia from other states showed up.

Another standoff between the states and the federal government.

The states won.

That's the way it seems to be.

From Fox News:

BLM faced criticism when police used stun guns on one of Bundy's adult sons during a Wednesday confrontation on a state highway near the Bundy melon farm in the Gold Butte area. 

Whoa!

From one of the militia:

"Our mission here is to protect the protestors and the American citizens from the violence that the federal government is dishing out,” Jim Landy, a member of the West Mountain Rangers, who made the journey from Montana to Nevada, told Fox News Channel. “People here are scared."

The Huffington Post (from the Associated Press) reported earlier that Senator Dean Heller objected to the BLM's approach to handling the matter:

Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada said he told new U.S. Bureau of Land Management chief Neil Kornze in Washington, D.C., that law-abiding Nevadans shouldn't be penalized by an "overreaching" agency.

Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval pointed earlier to what he called "an atmosphere of intimidation," resulting from the roundup and said he believed constitutional rights were being trampled.

The Post then outlined the conflict thus:

The current showdown pits rancher Cliven Bundy's claims of ancestral rights to graze his cows on open range against federal claims that the cattle are trespassing on arid and fragile habitat of the endangered desert tortoise. Bundy has said he owns about 500 branded cattle on the range and claims the other 400 targeted for roundup are his, too.

The federal government wanted to step in and take the cattle away from a rancher grazing his cattle. Democratic lawmaker Steven Horsford of Las Vegas claimed that the Federal Government was enforcing a decades-long court order.

Sandoval sounded off on the treatment of First Amendment protestors:

"No cow justifies the atmosphere of intimidation which currently exists nor the limitation of constitutional rights that are sacred to all Nevadans," the governor said in a statement.

Sandoval said he was most offended that armed federal officials have tried to corral people protesting the roundup into a fenced-in "First Amendment area" south of the resort city of Mesquite.
Granted, a legal disputed brought on this conflict, but over a desert tortoise?

I was most impressed by the incoming militia, which showed the might and right connected with the Second Amendment, thus demonstrating the reason why the Framers put the Second Amendment in the Constitution: to protect the citizenry from the government.

In effect, Bundy and private supporters shouted at the Feds: #GetOffMyLawn and the Feds complied. Other reports indicate that they gave back the confiscated livestock, too.

The plot thickens, however, when connecting this stand-off with US Senator Harry Reid:

“Well, it’s not over,” he told Reno’s KRNV. “We can’t have an American people that violate the law and just walk away from it, so it’s not over.”

Other sources allege that the federal government was trying to force Bundy of the land in order to prepare the way for solar panels. The green lobby strikes again?

Whatever the case may be, the presence of federal forces rounding up cattle as well as tasering Bundy's son, should alarm us, no matter what the circumstances.

President Obama refuses to defend the borders, or to uphold limits with foreign leaders, yet he has no problem with federal bureaucracies dispatching law enforcement to Western farmers' grazing lands?

Time for the American People to tell President Obama and the federal government #GetOffMyLawn