GET OFF MY PROPERTY

The Bundy bandits are at it again, this time in Oregon where a group of militiamen, including Ammon Bundy, the son of outlaw rancher Cliven Bundy, have commandeered a federal building - the park headquarters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The militiamen initially held a rally in Burns, Oregon to protest the imprisonment of two rancher arsonists who intentionally set fires that scorched federally-owned grazing land, but the protest rally was apparently not sufficient to suit their goal, so they hijacked the park headquarters building at the wildlife refuge to attract more notoriety. The militiamen got the notoriety they were seeking. Now it’s time for federal authorities to clear out the headquarters and toss those militiamen’s butts in jail.

Why? Well, for starters, that land belongs to me…and you…and the three hundred and fifty million other Americans who have delegated to our federal government the responsibility of managing federally-owned lands for the benefit of all our citizenry. The Bundy bandits are attempting an armed takeover of those lands without paying for the right to use them. That makes them trespassers and terrorists, not patriots. Don’t think for one second that those same ranchers wouldn’t use their shotguns and assault rifles if any of us tried to graze our cattle on their private lands, and they’d be the first to claim they were justified in using force to protect their own property rights.

We have property rights to federally-owned lands, too, and our collective right to the fruits of those lands takes precedent over the right of any one or handful of individuals to use the land to the exclusion of others. The Bundy bandits are trespassers who demand, at the end of the barrel of a gun, to graze their cattle on federally-owned land, free of charge, but I’ll be damned if they’re going to force me to hand over my citizenship right to a share of the grazing fees just because a pack of gun-toting cowboys think their rights outweigh mine. The last thing America needs is another Ruby Ridge or Waco fiasco, but the Bundy bandits and their militia followers are just another ISIS-like terrorist group, and they should be treated accordingly.