Ruby Ridge

The story of Ruby Ridge is simple: the government wanted informants in a white-supremacist society near the home of one Randy Weaver. Weaver was a white-separatist who chose to live his philosophy peacefully. He had attended one or two meetings of the supremacist society but decided that he wasn't interested in joining... but the government had other ideas. They wanted him to join, and they wanted him to become their informant.

Weaver wasn't interested. You'd think it would stop there, right? I mean, how low is it to pressure someone to join a white-supremacist society?

But the government decided they really wanted that informant, so they sent out one of their undercover agents with a shotgun to Weaver's place. The agent wanted to get the shotgun sawed off, and Weaver accomodated him. Opinions differ on whether the resulting shotgun was short enough at that time to require a federal tax stamp, or whether the undercover agent sawed off a little more on his own later; either way, the length of the shotgun ended up being about a half-inch too short to be legal.

That's how the government figured to get their informant, you see. They would threaten Weaver with prosecution over the missing half-inch of barrel length sawed from the shotgun of one of their own agents, and they would agree not to prosecute if Weaver became an informant for them. But there was only one problem... Weaver wasn't interested.

So they put his house under surveilance for months. (Yes, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent trying to collect a $200 tax). And then, while sneaking around in the woods near Weaver's house, government agents screwed up -- they got caught by a dog.

But these are government agents, right? No problem -- they shot the dog. Problem solved, right?

Not quite -- Weaver's son, Sammy, and his friend Kevin Harris were out with the dog, and they both had rifles. Understandably taking exception to people shooting their dog, they shot back, then turned to run back to the house. That's when the government agents shot Sammy, who was about 13, in the back, killing him.

That started a siege, and the government brought in lots of guns... along with a military sniper named Lon Horiuchi.

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