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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jun 11, 2014 - 07:19pm PT
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Well done bluey.
However it doesn't sound as if these are premeditated mass murders.
Fred, hopefully I remembered your name correctly, you're correct but you're missing my point. Guns in the hands of responsible people can greatly reduce lives lost before LEOs show up. It can take a while sometimes for LEO to arrive.
The 2 psychos in Nevada were definitely hell-bent on killing more people before the citizen stepped in and most likely sent their plans to hell.
The Oregan mall-shooter in 2012 was confronted by a CCW citizen and after seeing him, promptly went into a store and blew his head off.
http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html
The UCSB shooter did the same when confronted by police with guns, as did the Sandy Hook shooter.
The bottom line is that the sooner guns arrive to a scene, the quicker the shooting stops, wether it's a citizen or LEO showing up.
The 2 psychos in Nevada are particularly disturbing. They actually walked up to cops and executed them. They strike me as crazy meth-heads more than anything else.
Oakland, Ca., remember when those 2 motorcycle cops were executed by the gang-banger? Nasty sh#t.
I don't blame guns though, because felons will always get them, I blame psychos with no respect for law and innocent life. Very similar to terrorists.
EDIT: Didn't Lott claim it happens millions of times a year? Even if one tenth it would still be too commonplace.
That's another thing. Lott never gets credit for the research he's done that clearly shows that gun-free zones have higher gun violence rates than the converse areas. Meh....
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Jun 11, 2014 - 07:44pm PT
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Steve, I agree on a couple of your facts.
The UCSB shooter did the same when confronted by police with guns Would he have even been in that situation without his 2 Glocks and 400 rounds?
The 2 psychos in Nevada are particularly disturbing. They actually walked up to cops and executed them. They strike me as crazy meth-heads more than anything else. They fully intended to kill themselves. Or at least the woman did. If the guy who tried to stop them had ducked and run instead, he might well be alive. Obviously after he was dead he didn't stop them from killing anyone else.
Oakland, Ca., remember when those 2 motorcycle cops were executed by the gang-banger? Nasty sh#t. Actually I don't clearly remember it but I don't doubt it. An example of a determined assassin. Two armed cops couldn't defend themselves. How was the gang-banger captured/killed? By a Good Guy With a Gun?
I don't blame guns though, because DETERMINED felons will always get them, I blame psychos with no respect for law and innocent life. Very similar to terrorists. (I added DETERMINED)
It's also true that letting just about anyone have a gun makes it more dangerous for all of us. There are always individual events that will support either side of the argument. It's the big picture statistics that matters.
I've personally known 4 people who killed themselves with firearms. I don't know anyone who's done it any other way. Three of them friends, two of them neighbors, one of them a wife and mother, one a 21 year old boy. Two of them at home with family. My local fire company, all friends of mine and of the victims, had to pick up the pieces of the mother and the boy. Had to clean the house and garage. Attempted suicide by firearm has close to 100% success rate. It's quick and easy. Hanging or asphyxiation take time and struggle. Prescription pills and other poisons have a low success rate. Few other means of suicide are as effective.
As a society we are responsible for allowing such easy access to deadly force.
Fred
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jun 11, 2014 - 08:21pm PT
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Actually I don't clearly remember it but I don't doubt it. An example of a determined assassin. Two armed cops couldn't defend themselves. How was the gang-banger captured/killed? By a Good Guy With a Gun?
Yep, several block man-hunt that ended with the perp being shot dead by LEO.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Jun 12, 2014 - 03:24pm PT
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High Traverse said
I've personally known 4 people who killed themselves with firearms
Wow! (up until now I thought it would be cool to get to know you,..)
Often enough people botch the job with guns. I knew a doctor in Alaska that was constantly dealing with botched suicides by firearm.
Best way to go must be nitrous oxide, you botch that you just wake up feeling stupid. Good organ preservation too.
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Flip Flop
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Jun 12, 2014 - 03:50pm PT
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At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a 7,000-pound truck bomb, constructed of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and nitromethane racing fuel and packed into 13 plastic barrels, ripped through the heart of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The explosion wrecked much of downtown Oklahoma City and killed 168 people, including 19 children in a day-care center. Another 500 were injured. Although many Americans initially suspected an attack by Middle Eastern radicals, it quickly became clear that the mass murder had actually been carried out by domestic, right-wing terrorists.
The slaughter engineered by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, men steeped in the conspiracy theories and white-hot fury of the American radical right, marked the opening shot in a new kind of domestic political extremism — a revolutionary ideology whose practitioners do not hesitate to carry out attacks directed at entirely innocent victims, people selected essentially at random to make a political point. After Oklahoma, it was no longer sufficient for many American right-wing terrorists to strike at a target of political significance — instead, they reached for higher and higher body counts, reasoning that they had to eclipse McVeigh's attack to win attention.
What follows is a detailed listing of major terrorist plots and racist rampages that have emerged from the American radical right in the years since Oklahoma City. These have included plans to bomb government buildings, banks, refineries, utilities, clinics, synagogues, mosques, memorials and bridges; to assassinate police officers, judges, politicians, civil rights figures and others; to rob banks, armored cars and other criminals; and to amass illegal machine guns, missiles, explosives and biological and chemical weapons. [Each of these plots aimed to make changes in America through the use of political violence.] Most contemplated the deaths of large numbers of people — in one case, as many as 30,000, or 10 times the number murdered on Sept. 11, 2001.
Here are the stories of plots, conspiracies and racist rampages since 1995 — plots and violence waged against a democratic America.
July 28, 1995
Antigovernment extremist Charles Ray Polk is arrested after trying to purchase a machine gun from an undercover police officer, and is later indicted by federal grand jury for plotting to blow up the Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, Texas. At the time of his arrest, Polk is trying to purchase plastic explosives to add to the already huge arsenal he's amassed. Polk is sentenced to almost 21 years in federal prison.
October 9, 1995
Saboteurs derail an Amtrak passenger train near Hyder, Ariz., killing one person and injuring about 70 others. Several antigovernment messages, signed by the "Sons of Gestapo," are left behind. The perpetrators remain at large.
November 9, 1995
Oklahoma Constitutional Militia leader Willie Ray Lampley, his wife Cecilia and another man, John Dare Baird, are arrested as they prepare explosives to bomb numerous targets, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, gay bars and abortion clinics. The three, along with another suspect arrested later, are sentenced to terms of up to 11 years in 1996. Cecilia Lampley is released in 2000, while Baird and Willie Lampley — who wrote letters from prison urging others to violence — are freed in 2004 and 2006, respectively.
December 18, 1995
An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee discovers a plastic drum packed with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil in a parking lot behind the IRS building in Reno, Nev. The device failed to explode a day earlier when a three-foot fuse went out prematurely. Ten days later, tax protester Joseph Martin Bailie is arrested. Bailie is eventually sentenced to 36 years in federal prison, with a release date of 2027. An accomplice, Ellis Edward Hurst, is released in 2004.
January 18, 1996
Peter Kevin Langan, the pseudonymous "Commander Pedro" who leads the underground Aryan Republican Army, is arrested after a shootout with the FBI in Ohio. Along with six other suspects arrested around the same time, Langan is charged in connection with a string of 22 bank robberies in seven Midwestern states between 1994 and 1996. After pleading guilty and agreeing to testify, co-conspirator Richard Guthrie commits suicide in his cell. Two others, Kevin McCarthy and Scott Stedeford, enter plea bargains and do testify against their co-conspirators. Eventually, Mark Thomas, a leading neo-Nazi in Pennsylvania, pleads guilty for his role in helping organize the robberies and agrees to testify against Langan and other gang members. Shawn Kenny, another suspect, becomes a federal informant. Langan is sentenced to a life term in one case, plus 55 years in another. McCarthy is released from prison in 2007, while Stedeford's release date is set in 2022. Thomas receives eight years and is released in early 2004.
April 11, 1996
Antigovernment activist and self-described "survivalist" Ray Hamblin is charged with illegal possession of explosives after authorities find 460 pounds of the high explosive Tovex, 746 pounds of ANFO blasting agent and 15 homemade hand grenades on his property in Hood River, Ore. Hamblin is sentenced to almost four years in federal prison, and is released in March 2000.
April 12, 1996
Apparently inspired by his reading of a neo-Nazi tract, Larry Wayne Shoemake kills one black man and wounds seven other people, including a reporter, during a racist shooting spree in a black neighborhood in Jackson, Miss. As police close in on the abandoned restaurant he is shooting from, Shoemake, who is white, sets the restaurant on fire and kills himself. A search of his home finds references to "Separation or Annihilation," an essay on race relations by neo-Nazi National Alliance leader William Pierce, along with an arsenal of weapons that includes 17 long guns, 20,000 rounds of ammunition, and countless military manuals.
April 26, 1996
Two leaders of the Militia-at-Large of the Republic of Georgia, Robert Edward Starr III and William James McCranie Jr., are charged with manufacturing shrapnel-packed pipe bombs for distribution to militia members. Later in the year, they are sentenced to terms of up to eight years. Another Militia-at-Large member, Troy Allen Kayser (alias Troy Spain), is arrested two weeks later and accused of training a team to assassinate politicians. Starr is released from prison in 2003, while McCranie gets out in 2001. Kayser, convicted of conspiracy, is released in early 2002.
July 1, 1996
Twelve members of an Arizona militia group called the Viper Team are arrested on federal conspiracy, weapons and explosive charges after allegedly surveilling and videotaping government buildings as potential targets. All 12 plead guilty or are convicted of various charges, drawing sentences of up to nine years in prison. The plot participants are all released in subsequent years. Gary Curds Baer, who drew the heaviest sentence after being found with 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a bomb component, is freed in May 2004.
July 27, 1996
A nail-packed bomb goes off at the Atlanta Olympics, which are seen by many extremists as part of a Satanic "New World Order," killing one person and injuring more than 100 others. Investigators will later conclude the attack is linked to 1997-1998 bombings of an Atlanta-area abortion clinic, an Atlanta gay bar and a Birmingham, Ala., abortion facility. Suspect Eric Robert Rudolph — a reclusive North Carolina man tied to the anti-Semitic Christian Identity theology — flees into the woods of his native state after he is identified in early 1998 as a suspect in the Birmingham attack, and is only captured five years later. Eventually, he pleads guilty to all of the attacks attributed to him in exchange for life without parole.
July 29, 1996
Washington State Militia leader John Pitner and seven others are arrested on weapons and explosives charges in connection with a plot to build pipe bombs to resist a feared invasion by the United Nations. Pitner and four others are convicted on weapons charges, while conspiracy charges against all eight end in a mistrial. Pitner is later retried on that charge, convicted and sentenced to four years in prison. He is released in 2001.
October 8, 1996
Three "Phineas Priests" — racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity terrorists who feel they've been called by God to undertake violent attacks — are charged in connection with two bank robberies and bombings at the two banks, a Spokane newspaper and a Planned Parenthood office. Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merrell are eventually convicted and sentenced to life terms. Brian Ratigan, a fourth member of the group arrested separately, draws a 55-year term; he is scheduled for release in 2045.
October 11, 1996
Seven members of the Mountaineer Militia are arrested in a plot to blow up the FBI's national fingerprint records center, where 1,000 people work, in West Virginia. In 1998, leader Floyd "Ray" Looker is sentenced to 18 years in prison. He is released in June 2012. Two other defendants are sentenced on explosives charges and a third draws a year in prison for providing blueprints of the FBI facility to Looker, who then sold them to a government informant who was posing as a terrorist.
January 16, 1997
Two anti-personnel bombs — the second clearly designed to kill arriving law enforcement and rescue workers — explode outside an abortion clinic in Sandy Springs, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. Seven people are injured. Letters signed by the "Army of God" claim responsibility for this attack and another, a month later, at an Atlanta gay bar. Authorities later learn that these attacks, the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, were all carried out by Eric Robert Rudolph, who is captured in 2003 after five years on the run. Rudolph avoids the death penalty by pleading guilty in exchange for a life sentence, but simultaneously releases a defiant statement defending his attacks.
January 22, 1997
Authorities raid the Martinton, Ill., home of former Marine Ricky Salyers, an alleged Ku Klux Klan member, discovering 35,000 rounds of heavy ammunition, armor piercing shells, smoke and tear gas grenades, live shells for grenade launchers, artillery shells and other military gear. Salyers was discharged earlier from the Marines, where he taught demolitions and sniping, after tossing a live grenade (with the pin still in) at state police officers serving him with a search warrant in 1995. Following the 1997 raid, Salyers, an alleged member of the underground Black Dawn group of extremists in the military, is sentenced to serve three years for weapons violations. He is released from prison in 2000.
March 26, 1997
Militia activist Brendon Blasz is arrested in Kalamazoo, Mich., and charged with making pipe bombs and other illegal explosives. Prosecutors say Blasz plotted to bomb the federal building in Battle Creek, the IRS building in Portage, a Kalamazoo television station and federal armories. But they recommend leniency on his explosives conviction after Blasz, a member of the Michigan Militia Corps Wolverines, renounces his antigovernment beliefs and cooperates with them. He is sentenced to more than three years in federal prison and released in late 1999.
April 22, 1997
Three Ku Klux Klan members are arrested in a plot to blow up a natural gas refinery outside Fort Worth, Texas, after local Klan leader Robert Spence gets cold feet and goes to the FBI. The three, along with a fourth arrested later, expected to kill a huge number of people with the blast — authorities later say as many as 30,000 might have died — which was to serve, incredibly, as a diversion for a simultaneous armored car robbery. Among the victims would have been children at a nearby school. All four plead guilty to conspiracy charges and are sentenced to terms of up to 20 years. Spence enters the witness protection program. Carl Jay Waskom Jr. is released in 2004, while Shawn and Catherine Adams, a couple, are freed in 2006. Edward Taylor Jr. is released in early 2007.
April 23, 1997
Florida police arrest Todd Vanbiber, a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance's Tampa unit and the shadowy League of the Silent Soldier, after he accidentally sets off pipe bombs he is building, blasting shrapnel into his own face. He is accused of plotting to use the bombs on the approach to Disney World to divert attention from a planned string of bank robberies. Vanbiber pleads guilty to weapons and explosives charges and is sentenced to more than six years in federal prison. He is released in 2002. Within two years, Vanbiber is posting messages on neo-Nazi Internet sites boasting that he has built over 300 bombs successfully and only made one error, and describing mass murderer Timothy McVeigh as a hero.
April 27, 1997
After a cache of explosives stored in a tree blows up near Yuba City, Calif., police arrest Montana Freemen supporter William Robert Goehler. Investigators looking into the blast arrest two Goehler associates, one of them a militia leader, after finding 500 pounds of explosives — enough to level three city blocks — in a motor home parked outside their residence. Six others are arrested on related charges. Goehler, with previous convictions for rape, burglary and assault, is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He is later accused of stabbing his attorney with a shank and charged with attacking prison psychologists.
May 3, 1997
Antigovernment extremists set fire to the IRS office in Colorado Springs, Colo., causing $2.5 million in damage and injuring a firefighter. Federal agents later arrest five men in connection with the arson, which is conceived as a protest against the tax system. Ringleader James Cleaver, former national director of the antigovernment Sons of Liberty group, is accused of threatening a witness and eventually sentenced to 33 years in prison, with a release date of 2030. Accomplice Jack Dowell receives 30 years and is scheduled to be freed in 2027. Both are ordered to pay $2.2 million in restitution. Dowell's cousin is acquitted of all charges, while two other suspects, Ronald Sherman and Thomas Shafer, plead guilty to perjury charges in connection with the case.
July 4, 1997
Militiaman Bradley Playford Glover and another heavily armed antigovernment activist are arrested before dawn near Fort Hood, in central Texas, just hours before they planned to invade the Army base and slaughter foreign troops they mistakenly believed were housed there. In the next few days, five other people are arrested in several states for their alleged roles in the plot to invade a series of military bases where the group believes United Nations forces are massing for an assault on Americans. All seven are part of a splinter group from the Third Continental Congress, a kind of militia government-in-waiting. In the end, Glover is sentenced to two years on Kansas weapons charges, to be followed by a five-year federal term in connection with the Fort Hood plot. The others draw lesser terms. Glover is released in 2003, the last of the seven to get out.
December 12, 1997
A federal grand jury in Arkansas indicts three men on racketeering charges for plotting to overthrow the government and create a whites-only Aryan People's Republic, which they intend to grow through polygamy. Chevie Kehoe, Daniel Lee and Faron Lovelace are accused of crimes in six states, including murder, kidnapping, robbery and conspiracy. Kehoe and Lee will also face state charges of murdering an Arkansas family, including an 8-year-old girl, in 1996. Kehoe ultimately receives a life sentence on that charge, while Lee is sentenced to death. Lovelace is sentenced to death for the murder of a suspected informant, but because of court rulings is later resentenced to life without parole. Kehoe's brother, Cheyne, is convicted of attempted murder during a 1997 Ohio shootout with police and sentenced to 24 years in prison, despite his helping authorities track down his fugitive brother in Utah after the shootout. Cheyne went to the authorities after Chevie began talking about murdering their parents and showing sexual interest in Cheyne's wife.
January 29, 1998
An off-duty police officer is killed and a nurse terribly maimed when a nail-packed, remote-control bomb explodes outside a Birmingham, Ala., abortion facility, the New Woman All Women clinic. Letters to media outlets and officials claim responsibility in the name of the "Army of God," the same entity that took credit for the bombings of a clinic and a gay bar in the Atlanta area. The attack also will be linked to the fatal 1996 bombing of the Atlanta Olympics. Eric Robert Rudolph, a loner from North Carolina, is first identified as a suspect when witnesses spot his pickup truck fleeing the Birmingham bombing. But he is not caught until 2003. He ultimately pleads guilty to all four attacks in exchange for a life sentence.
February 23, 1998
Three men with links to a Ku Klux Klan group are arrested near East St. Louis, Ill., on weapons charges. The three, along with three other men arrested later, formed a group called The New Order, patterned on a 1980s terror group called The Order (a.k.a. the Silent Brotherhood) that carried out assassinations and armored car heists. New Order members plotted to assassinate a federal judge and civil rights lawyer Morris Dees, blow up the Southern Poverty Law Center that Dees co-founded and other buildings, poison water supplies and rob banks. Wallace Weicherding, one of the men, came to a 1997 Dees speech with a concealed gun but turned back rather than pass through a metal detector. In the end, all six plead guilty or are convicted of weapons charges, drawing terms of up to seven years in federal prison. New Order leader Dennis McGiffen is released in 2004, the last of the six to regain his freedom.
March 18, 1998
Three members of the North American Militia of Southwestern Michigan are arrested on firearms and other charges. Prosecutors say the men conspired to bomb federal buildings, a Kalamazoo television station and an interstate highway interchange, kill federal agents, assassinate politicians and attack aircraft at a National Guard base — attacks that were all to be funded by marijuana sales. The group's leader, Ken Carter, is a self-described member of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations. Carter pleads guilty, testifies against his former comrades, and is sentenced to five years in prison. The others, Randy Graham and Bradford Metcalf, go to trial and are ultimately handed sentences of 40 and 55 years, respectively. Carter is released from prison in 2002.
May 29, 1998
A day after stealing a water truck, three men shoot and kill a Cortez, Colo., police officer and wound two other officers as they try to stop the suspects during a road chase. After the gun battle, the three — Alan Monty Pilon, Robert Mason and Jason McVean — disappear into the canyons of the high desert. Mason is found a week later, dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot. The skeletal remains of Pilon are found in 1999 and show that he, too, died of a gunshot to the head, another apparent suicide. McVean is not found, but most authorities assume he died in the desert. Many officials believe the three men intended to use the water truck in some kind of terrorist attack, but the nature of their suspected plans is never learned.
July 1, 1998
Three men are charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction after threatening President Clinton and other federal officials with biological weapons. Officials say the men planned to use a cactus thorn coated with a toxin like anthrax and fired by a modified butane lighter to carry out the murders. One man is acquitted of the charges, but Jack Abbot Grebe Jr., and Johnnie Wise — a 72-year-old man who attended meetings of the separatist Republic of Texas group — are sentenced to more than 24 years in prison. The men are set for release in 2019.
July 30, 1998
South Carolina militia member Paul T. Chastain is charged with weapons, explosives and drug violations after allegedly trying to trade drugs for a machine gun and enough C-4 plastic explosive to demolish a five-room house. The next year, Chastain pleads guilty to an array of charges, including threatening to kill Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh. He is sentenced to 15 years in federal prison and is released in 2011.
October 23, 1998
Dr. Barnett Slepian is assassinated by a sniper as he talks with his wife and children in the kitchen of their Amherst, N.Y., home. Identified as a suspect shortly after the murder, James Charles Kopp flees to Mexico, driven and disguised by friend Jennifer Rock, and goes on to hide out in Ireland and France. Two fellow anti-abortion extremists, Loretta Marra and Dennis Malvasi, make plans to help Kopp secretly return. Kopp, also suspected in the earlier sniper woundings of four physicians in Canada and upstate New York, is arrested in France as he picks up money wired by Marra and Malvasi. He eventually admits the shooting to a newspaper reporter — claiming that he only intended to wound Slepian — and is sentenced to life in prison plus 10 years. In 2003, Marra and Malvasi are sentenced to time served after pleading guilty to federal charges related to harboring a fugitive.
June 10, 1999
Officials arrest Alabama plumber Chris Scott Gilliam, a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, after he attempts to purchase 10 hand grenades from an undercover federal agent. Gilliam, who months earlier paraded in an extremist T-shirt in front of the Southern Poverty Law Center's offices in Montgomery, tells agents he planned to send mail bombs to targets in Washington, D.C. Agents searching his home find bomb-making manuals, white supremacist literature and an assault rifle. Gilliam pleads guilty to federal firearms charges and is sentenced to 10 years in prison. He is released in early 2008.
July 1, 1999
A gay couple, Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder, are shot to death in bed at their home near Redding, Calif. Days later, after tracking purchases made on Mowder's stolen credit card, police arrest brothers Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams. At least one of the pair, Matthew Williams (both use their middle names), is an adherent of the anti-Semitic Christian Identity theology. Police soon learn that the brothers two weeks earlier carried out arson attacks against three synagogues and an abortion clinic in Sacramento. Both brothers, whose mother at one point refers in a conversation to her sons' victims as "two homos," eventually admit their guilt — in Matthew's case, in a newspaper interview. Matthew, who at one point badly injures a guard in a surprise attack, commits suicide in 2002. Tyler, who pleads guilty to an array of charges in the case, is given two sentences amounting to 50 years to be served consecutively.
July 2, 1999
Infuriated that neo-Nazi leader Matt Hale has just been denied his law license by Illinois officials, follower Benjamin Nathaniel Smith begins a three-day murder spree across Illinois and Indiana, shooting to death a popular black former college basketball coach and a Korean doctoral student and wounding nine other minorities. Smith kills himself as police close in during a car chase. Hale, the "Pontifex Maximus," or leader, of the World Church of the Creator, at first claims to barely know Smith. But it quickly emerges that Hale has recently given Smith his group's top award and, in fact, spent some 16 hours on the phone with him in the two weeks before Smith's rampage. Conveniently, Hale receives a registered letter from Smith just days after his suicide, informing Hale that Smith is quitting the group because he now sees violence as the only answer.
August 10, 1999
Buford Furrow, a former member of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations who has been living with the widow of slain terrorist leader Bob Mathews, strides into a Jewish community center near Los Angeles and fires more than 70 bullets, wounding three boys, a teenage girl and a woman. He then drives into the San Fernando Valley and murders Filipino-American mailman Joseph Ileto. The next day, Furrow turns himself in, saying he intended to send "a wake-up call to America to kill Jews." Furrow, who has a history of mental illness, eventually pleads guilty and is sentenced to two life terms without parole, plus 110 years in prison.
September 1, 1999
Anti-abortion extremist Clayton Lee Wagner, who nine months earlier escaped from an Illinois jail while awaiting sentencing on weapons and carjacking charges, is arrested in Cincinnati, Ohio. Wagner's odyssey began in September 1999, when he was stopped driving a stolen camper in Illinois and told police he was headed to Seattle to murder an abortion provider. He escaped in February 2001 and, while on the lam, mailed more than 550 hoax anthrax letters to abortion clinics and posted an Internet threat warning abortion clinic workers that "if you work for the murderous abortionist, I'm going to kill you." Wagner is eventually sentenced to 30 years on the Illinois charges. In Ohio, he is sentenced to almost 20 years more, to be served consecutively, on various weapons and car theft charges related to his time on the run. In late 2003, he also is found guilty of 51 federal terrorism charges. He is scheduled to be released in 2046.
November 5, 1999
FBI agents arrest James Kenneth Gluck in Tampa, Fla., after he wrote a 10-page letter to judges in Jefferson County, Colo., threatening to "wage biological warfare" on a county justice center. While searching his home, police find the materials needed to make ricin, one of the deadliest poisons known. Gluck later threatens a judge, claiming that he could kill 10,000 people with the chemical. After serving time in federal prison, Gluck is released in early 2001.
December 5, 1999
Two California men, both members of the San Joaquin Militia, are charged with conspiracy in connection with a plot to blow up two 12-million-gallon propane tanks, a television tower and an electrical substation in hopes of provoking an insurrection. In 2001, the former militia leader, Donald Rudolph, pleads guilty to plotting to kill a federal judge and blow up the propane tanks, and testifies against his former comrades. Kevin Ray Patterson and Charles Dennis Kiles are ultimately convicted of several charges in connection with the conspiracy. In 2002, Patterson is sentenced to 24 years and five months in prison; Kiles to 22 years.
December 8, 1999
Donald Beauregard, head of a militia coalition known as the Southeastern States Alliance, is charged with conspiracy, providing materials for a terrorist act and gun violations in a plot to bomb energy facilities and cause power outages in Florida and Georgia. After pleading guilty to several charges, Beauregard, who once claimed to have discovered a secret map detailing a planned UN takeover mistakenly printed on a box of Trix cereal, is sentenced to five years in federal prison. He is released in 2004, a year after accomplice James Troy Diver is freed following a similar conviction.
March 9, 2000
Federal agents arrest Mark Wayne McCool, the one-time leader of the Texas Militia and Combined Action Program, as he allegedly makes plans to attack the Houston federal building. McCool, who is arrested after buying powerful C-4 plastic explosives and an automatic weapon from an undercover FBI agent, earlier plotted to attack the federal building with a member of his own group and a member of the antigovernment Republic of Texas, but those two men eventually abandoned the plot. McCool, however, remained convinced the UN had stored a cache of military materiel in the building. In the end, he pleads guilty to federal charges that bring him just six months in jail.
April 28, 2000
Immigration attorney Richard Baumhammers, himself the son of Latvian immigrants, goes on a rampage in the Pittsburgh area against non-whites, killing five people and critically wounding a sixth. Baumhammers had recently started a tiny white supremacist group, the Free Market Party, that demanded an end to non-white immigration into the United States. In the end, the unemployed attorney, who is living with parents at the time of his murder spree, is sentenced to death.
March 1, 2001
As part of an ongoing probe into a white supremacist group, federal and local law enforcement agents raid the Corbett, Ore., home of Fritz Springmeier, seizing weapons, racist literature and marijuana-growing equipment. They also find a binder notebook entitled “Army of God, Yahweh’s Warriors” containing what officials call a list of targets that include a local federal building and the FBI’s Oregon offices. Springmeier, an associate of the anti-Semitic Christian Patriots Association, is eventually charged with setting off a diversionary bomb at an adult video store in Damascus, Ore., in 1997 as part of a bank robbery carried out by accomplice Forrest Bateman Jr. Another 2001 raid finds small amounts of bomb materials and marijuana in Bateman’s home. Eventually, Bateman pleads guilty to bank robbery and Springmeier is convicted of the same charges. Both are sentenced to nine years. Springmeier is released in March 2011; Bateman in September 2011.
April 19, 2001
White supremacists Leo Felton and girlfriend Erica Chase are arrested following a foot chase that began when a police officer spotted them trying to pass counterfeit bills at a Boston donut shop. Investigators quickly learn Felton heads up a tiny group called Aryan Unit One, and that the couple, who had already obtained a timing device, planned to blow up black and Jewish landmarks and possibly assassinate black and Jewish leaders. They also learn another amazing fact: Felton, a self-described Aryan, is secretly biracial. Felton and Chase are eventually convicted of conspiracy, weapons violations and obstruction, and Felton is also convicted of bank robbery and other charges. Felton, who previously served 11 years for assaulting a black taxi driver, is sentenced to serve more than 21 years in federal prison, while his one-time sweetheart draws a lesser sentence and is released in 2007.
October 14, 2001
A North Carolina sheriff's deputy pulls over Steve Anderson, a former "colonel" in the Kentucky Militia, on a routine traffic stop as he heads home to Kentucky from a white supremacist gathering in North Carolina. Anderson, who is an adherent of racist Christian Identity theology and has issued violent threats against officials for months via an illegal pirate radio station, pulls out a semi-automatic weapon and peppers the deputy's car with bullets before driving his truck into the woods and disappearing for 13 months. Officials later find six pipe bombs in Anderson's abandoned truck and 27 bombs and destructive devices in his home. In the end, Anderson apologizes for his actions and pleads guilty. He is sentenced on a variety of firearms charges to 15 years in federal prison.
December 11, 2001
Jewish Defense League (JDL) chairman Irving David Rubin and a follower, Earl Leslie Krugel, are arrested in California and charged with conspiring to bomb the offices of U.S. Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) and the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City. Authorities say a confidential informant taped meetings with the two in which the bombings were discussed and Krugel said the JDL needed "to do something to one of their filthy mosques." Rubin later commits suicide in prison, officials say, just before he is to go on trial in 2002. Krugel pleads guilty to conspiracy in both plots, and testifies that Rubin conspired with him. Krugel dies in prison in 2005.
January 4, 2002
Neo-Nazi National Alliance member Michael Edward Smith is arrested after a car chase in Nashville, Tenn., that began when he was spotted sitting in a car with a semi-automatic rifle pointed at Sherith Israel Pre-School, run by a local synagogue. In Smith’s car, home and storage unit, officials find an arsenal that includes a .50-caliber rifle, 10 hand grenades, 13 pipe bombs, binary explosives, semi-automatic pistols, ammunition and an array of military manuals. They also find teenage porn on Smith’s computer and evidence that he carried out computer searches for Jewish schools and synagogues. In one of his emails, Smith wrote that Jews “perhaps” should be “stuffed head first into an oven.” Smith is sentenced to more than 10 years in prison and is released in 2011.
February 8, 2002
The leader of a militia-like group known as Project 7 and his girlfriend are arrested after an informant tells police the group is plotting to kill judges and law enforcement officers in order to kick off a revolution. David Burgert, who has a record for burglary and is already wanted for assaulting police officers, is found in the house of girlfriend Tracy Brockway along with an arsenal that includes pipe bombs and 25,000 rounds of ammunition. Also found are “intel sheets” with personal information about law enforcement officers, their spouses and children. Although officials are convinced the Project 7 plot was real, Burgert ultimately is convicted only of weapons charges, draws a seven-year sentence and is released in March 2010. Six others are also convicted of, or plead guilty to, weapons charges. Brockway gets a suspended sentence for harboring a fugitive, and is sent to prison for violating its terms. She is released in early 2008. On June 21, 2011, sheriff’s deputies outside Missoula, Mont., stop Burgert on a suspicious vehicle report. Burgert leads them on a pursuit and fires multiple rounds at the deputies before fleeing on foot. He is wanted on two counts of attempted murder for the shootout, and his current whereabouts are unknown.
July 19, 2002
Federal and local law enforcement agents arrest North Carolina Klan leader Charles Robert Barefoot Jr. for his role in a plot to blow up the Johnson County Sheriff's Office, the sheriff himself and the county jail. Officers find more than two dozen weapons in Barefoot's home. They also find bombs and bomb components in the home of Barefoot's son, Daniel Barefoot, who is charged that same day with the arson of a school bus and an empty barn. The elder Barefoot — who broke away from the National Knights of the KKK several months earlier to form his own, harder-line group, the Nation's Knights of the KKK — is charged with weapons violations and later sentenced to more than two years. In 2003, Barefoot, his wife and three other men are charged with the 2001 murder of a former Klan member. In 2007, a judge rules Barefoot mentally incompetent to stand trial for murder and commits him indefinitely to a mental hospital. Sharon Barefoot is released from prison in July 2009. Charles Barefoot is ruled competent to stand trial in 2011 and, in September 2012, a jury convicts him on six felony counts, including conspiracy, possession of stolen guns and receipt of explosives with intent to kill. He is sentenced in February 2013 to 15 years in prison and three years’ probation after his term.
August 22, 2002
Tampa-area podiatrist Robert J. Goldstein is arrested after police, called by Goldstein's wife after he allegedly threatened to kill her, find more than 15 explosive devices in their home, along with materials to make at least 30 more. Also found are homemade C-4 plastic explosives, grenades and mines, a .50-caliber rifle, semi-automatic weapons, and a list of 50 Islamic worship centers in the area. The most significant discovery is a three-page plan detailing plans to "kill all ‘rags'" at the Islamic Society of Pinellas County. Eventually, two other local men are charged in connection with the plot, and Goldstein's wife is arrested for possessing illegal destructive devices. Goldstein pleads guilty to plotting to blow up the Islamic Society and is sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison. His wife is released in 2006. Goldstein is released in August 2013.
October 3, 2002
Officials close in on longtime antigovernment extremist Larry Raugust at a rest stop in Idaho, arrest him and charge him with 16 counts of making and possessing destructive devices, including pipe bombs and pressure-detonated booby traps. He is accused of giving one explosive device to an undercover agent, and is also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot with colleagues in the Idaho Mountain Boys militia to murder a federal judge and a police officer, and to break a friend out of jail. A deadbeat dad, Raugust is also accused of helping plant land mines on property belonging to a friend whose land was seized by authorities over unpaid taxes. He eventually pleads guilty to 15 counts of making bombs and is sentenced to federal prison. Raugust was released in early 2008.
January 8, 2003
Federal agents arrest Matt Hale, the national leader of the neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator (WCOTC), as he reports to a Chicago courthouse in an ongoing copyright case over the name of his group. Hale is charged with soliciting the murder of the federal judge in the case, Joan Humphrey Lefkow, who he has publicly vilified as someone bent on the destruction of his group. (Although Lefkow originally ruled in WCOTC's favor, an appeals court found that the complaint brought by an identically named church in Oregon was legally justified, and Lefkow reversed herself accordingly.) In guarded language captured on tape recordings, Hale is heard agreeing that his security chief, an FBI informant, should kill Lefkow. Hale is found guilty and sentenced to serve 40 years in federal prison; he is not expected to be released until 2037.
January 18, 2003
James D. Brailey, a convicted felon who once was selected as "governor" of the state of Washington by the antigovernment Washington Jural Society, is arrested after a raid on his home turns up a machine gun, an assault rifle and several handguns. One informant tells the FBI that Brailey was plotting to assassinate Gov. Gary Locke, both because Locke was the state's real governor and because he was Chinese-American. A second informant says that Brailey actually went on a "dry run" to Olympia, carrying several guns into the state Capitol building to test security. Eventually, Brailey pleads guilty to weapons charges and is sentenced to serve 15 months in prison. He is released in 2004.
February 13, 2003
Federal agents in Pennsylvania arrest David Wayne Hull, imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and an adherent of the anti-Semitic Christian Identity theology, alleging that Hull arranged to buy hand grenades to blow up abortion clinics. The FBI says Hull also illegally instructed followers on how to build pipe bombs. Hull, who published a newsletter in which he urged readers to write Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh "to tell this great man goodbye," is found guilty of weapons violations and sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. He is released in July 2012.
April 3, 2003
Federal agents arrest antigovernment extremist David Roland Hinkson in Idaho and charge him with trying to hire an assassin on two occasions in 2002 and 2003 to murder a federal judge, a prosecutor and an IRS agent involved in a tax case against him. Hinkson, a businessman who earned millions of dollars from his Water Oz dietary supplement company but refused to pay almost $1 million in federal taxes, is convicted in 2004 of 26 counts related to the tax case. In early 2005, a federal jury finds him guilty in the assassination plot as well. He is not expected to be released until 2040.
April 10, 2003
The FBI raids the Noonday, Texas, home of William Krar and storage facilities that Krar rented in the area, discovering an arsenal that includes more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 65 pipe bombs and remote-control briefcase bombs, and almost two pounds of deadly sodium cyanide. Also found are components to convert the cyanide into a bomb capable of killing thousands, along with white supremacist and antigovernment material. Investigators soon learn Krar was stopped earlier in 2003 by police in Tennessee, who found several weapons and coded documents in his car that seemed to detail a plot. But Krar refuses to cooperate, and details of that alleged plan are never learned. He pleads guilty to possession of a chemical weapon and is sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, where he dies.
October 10, 2003
Police arrest Norman Somerville after finding a huge weapons cache on his property in northern Michigan that includes six machine guns, a powerful anti-aircraft gun, thousands of rounds of ammunition, hundreds of pounds of gunpowder, and an underground bunker. They also find two vehicles Somerville calls his “war wagons,” and on which prosecutors later say he planned to mount machine guns as part of a plan to stage an auto accident and then massacre arriving police. Officials describe Somerville as an antigovernment extremist enraged over the death of Scott Woodring, a Michigan Militia member killed by police a week after Woodring shot and killed a state trooper during a standoff. Somerville eventually pleads guilty to weapons charges and is sentenced to six years in prison. He is released in August 2009.
Dec. 8, 2003
Abbeville, S.C., Police Sgt. Danny Wilson and Constable Donnie Ouzts are shot to death by antigovernment “Patriot” Steven Bixby at the Abbeville home of his parents, Arthur and Rita Bixby. Wilson, and later Ouzts, had gone to the home after state workers who were surveying for a road-widening project that would have taken a few inches of the Bixbys’ front lawn complained that they were threatened by the family. After a day-long shootout, Steven and Arthur are arrested. Steven is charged with murder and criminal conspiracy, and his father is eventually sent to a mental institution. Rita, who was not in the house, is arrested later and charged as an accessory. Steven is sentenced to death in 2007 and remains on Death Row; his father is never tried and dies in the mental institution in 2011; and Rita is sentenced to life in 2007 and dies in prison four years later, six days after her husband.
April 1, 2004
Neo-Nazi Skinhead Sean Gillespie videotapes himself as he firebombs Temple B'nai Israel, an Oklahoma City synagogue, as part of a film he is preparing to inspire other racists to violent revolution. In it, Gillespie boasts that instead of merely pronouncing the white-supremacist "14 Words" slogan ("We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children"), he will carry out 14 violent attacks. A former member of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, Gillespie is found guilty of the attack and later sentenced to 39 years in federal prison, with an expected release date of 2038.
May 24, 2004
During the attempted robbery of a Tulsa bank by Wade and Christopher Lay, a father-son pair of antigovernment extremists, security guard Kenneth Anderson is shot to death. Both robbers are wounded, and are arrested a short time after fleeing the bank. At trial, Wade Lay testifies that he and his son acted “for the good of the American people” and in an effort to “preserve liberty.” Other evidence shows the pair hoped to get money to pay for weapons that they intended to use to kill Texas officials who they believed were responsible for the deadly 1993 standoff between the authorities and religious cultists in Waco. In the end, Wade Lay is sentenced to death for first-degree murder, while his son is sentenced to life without parole.
October 13, 2004
Ivan Duane Braden, a former National Guardsman discharged from an Iraq-bound unit after superiors noted signs of instability, is arrested after checking into a mental health facility and telling counselors about plans to blow up a synagogue and a National Guard armory in Tennessee. The FBI reports that Braden told agents that he planned to go to a synagogue wearing a trench coat stuffed with explosives and get himself "as close to children and the rabbi as possible," a plan Braden also outlined in notes found in his home. In addition, he intended to take and kill hostages at the Lenoir City Armory, before blowing the armory up. Eventually, Braden, who also possessed neo-Nazi literature and reportedly hated blacks and Jews from an early age, pleads guilty to conspiring to blow up the armory. He is sentenced to prison, where his release is expected in 2017.
October 25, 2004
FBI agents in Tennessee arrest farmhand Demetrius "Van" Crocker after he tried to purchase ingredients for deadly sarin nerve gas and C-4 plastic explosives from an undercover agent. The FBI reports that Crocker, who local officials say was involved in a white supremacist group in the 1980s, tells the agent that he admires Hitler and hates Jews and the government. He also says "it would be a good thing if somebody could detonate some sort of weapon of mass destruction on Washington, D.C." Crocker is convicted of trying to get explosives to destroy a building and imprisoned until an expected release in 2030.
May 20, 2005
Officials in New Jersey arrest two men they say asked a police informant to build them a bomb. Craig Orler, who has a history of burglary arrests, and Gabriel Carafa, said to be a leader of the neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator and a member of a racist skinhead group called The Hated, are charged with illegally selling 11 guns to police informants. Carafa gave one informant 60 pounds of urea to use in building him a bomb, but never said what the bomb was for. Police say they moved in before the alleged bombing plot developed further because they were concerned about the pair's activities. They taped Orler saying in a phone call that he was seeking people in Europe to help him go underground. Orler is sentenced to more than 10 years in prison, while Carafa draws seven.
June 10, 2005
Daniel J. Schertz, a former member of the North Georgia White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, is indicted in Chattanooga, Tenn., on federal weapons charges for allegedly making seven pipe bombs and selling them to an undercover informant with the idea that they would be used to murder Mexican and Haitian immigrant workers. The informant says Schertz demonstrated how to attach the pipe bombs to cars, then sold him bombs that Schertz expected to be used against a group of Haitians and, separately, Mexican workers on a bus headed to work in Florida. Schertz eventually pleads guilty to six charges — including teaching how to make an explosive device; making, possessing and transferring destructive devices; and possessing a pistol with armor-piercing bullets — and is sentenced to 14 years in prison. He is to be released in 2017.
March 19, 2006
U.S. Treasury agents in Utah arrest David J. D'Addabbo for allegedly threatening Internal Revenue Service employees with "death by firing squad" if they continued to try to collect taxes from him and his wife. D'Addabbo, who was reportedly carrying a Glock pistol, 40 rounds of ammunition and a switchblade knife when he was seized leaving a church service, allegedly wrote to the U.S. Tax Court that anyone attempting to collect taxes would be tried by a "jury of common people. You then could be found guilty of treason and immediately taken to a firing squad." In August D'Addabbo pleads guilty to one charge of threatening a government agent in exchange for the dismissal of three other charges of threatening IRS agents. He is sentenced to time served and released the same year as his arrest.
April 26, 2007
Five members of the Alabama Free Militia are arrested in north Alabama in a raid by federal and state law enforcement officers that uncovers a cache of 130 homemade hand grenades, an improvised grenade launcher, a Sten Mark submachine gun, a silencer, 2,500 rounds of ammunition and almost 100 marijuana plants. Raymond Kirk Dillard, the founder and “commander” of the group, pleads guilty to criminal conspiracy, illegally making and possessing destructive devices and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Other members of the group — Bonnell “Buster” Hughes, James Ray McElroy, Adam Lynn Cunningham and Randall Garrett Cole— also plead guilty to related charges. Although Dillard, who complained about the collapse of the American economy, terrorist attacks and Mexicans taking over the country, reportedly told his troops to open fire on federal agents if ever confronted, no shots are fired during the April raid, and the “commander” even points out booby-trap tripwires on his property to investigators. Dillard draws the harshest sentence, and is released in May 2012. Cole is released in December 2009; Cunningham in June 2009; Hughes in January 2009; and McElroy in August 2010.
June 8, 2008
Six people, most of them tied to the militia movement, are arrested in rural north-central Pennsylvania after officials find stockpiles of assault rifles, improvised explosives and homemade weapons, at least some of them apparently intended for use in terrorist attacks on U.S. officials. Agents find 16 homemade bombs during a search of the residence of Pennsylvania Citizens Militia recruiter Bradley T. Kahle, who allegedly tells authorities that he intended to shoot black people from a rooftop in Pittsburgh and also predicts civil war if either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton is elected president. A raid on the property of Morgan Jones results in the seizure of 73 weapons, including a homemade flame thrower, a machine that supposedly shot bolts of electricity, and an improvised cannon. Also arrested and charged with weapons violations are Marvin E. Hall, his girlfriend Melissa Huet and Perry Landis, who allegedly tells undercover agents he wanted to kill Gov. Ed Rendell. Landis is sentenced in 2009 to time served plus two years of supervised release. Hall is sentenced in January 2010 to time served with three years of probation. Huet spends years trying to get the charges against her – helping a convicted felon possess a firearm – dismissed. In July 2013, federal prosecutors drop gun charges against her.
August 24, 2008
White supremacists Shawn Robert Adolf, Tharin Robert Gartrell and Nathan D. Johnson are arrested in Denver during the Democratic National Convention on weapons charges and for possession of amphetamines. Although police say they talked about assassinating presidential candidate Barack Obama, they are not charged in connection with that threat because officials see their talk as drug-fueled boasting. Police report the three had high-powered, scoped rifles, wigs, camouflage clothing and a bulletproof vest, along with the crystal methamphetamine. Gartrell is released from prison in June 2009, while Johnson is released in 2010. Adolf, who was already wanted on other charges, draws a longer sentence and is released in April 2012.
October 24, 2008
Two white supremacists, Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman, are arrested in Tennessee for allegedly plotting to assassinate Barack Obama and murder more than 100 black people. Officials say Schlesselman and Cowart, a probationary member of the racist skinhead group Supreme White Alliance, planned to kill 88 people, then behead another 14. (Both numbers are significant in white supremacist circles. H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so double 8s stand for HH, or “Heil Hitler.” The number 14 represents the “14 Words,” a popular racist saying.) The pair are indicted on charges that include threatening a presidential candidate, possessing a sawed-off shotgun, taking firearms across state lines to commit crimes, planning to rob a licensed gun dealer, damaging religious property, and using a firearm during the commission of a crime. In 2010, Cowart is sentenced to 14 years and Schlesselman is sentenced to 10.
December 9, 2008
Police responding to a shooting at a home in Belfast, Maine, find James G. Cummings dead, allegedly killed by his wife after years of domestic abuse. They also find a cache of radioactive materials, which Cummings was apparently using to try to build a radioactive "dirty bomb," along with literature on how to build such a deadly explosive. Police also discover a membership application filled out by Cummings for the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement. Friends say that Cummings had a collection of Nazi memorabilia. The authorities say Cummings was reportedly "very upset" by the election of Barack Obama.
December 16, 2008
Kody Ray Brittingham, a lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps, is arrested with four others on attempted robbery charges. A search of his barracks room at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina turns up white supremacist materials and a journal written by Brittingham containing plans to kill Barack Obama. Brittingham is indicted for threatening the president-elect of the United States. He is sentenced in 2010 to 100 months in prison.
January 21, 2009
On the day after Barack Obama is inaugurated as the nation's first black president, Keith Luke of Brockton, Mass., is arrested after shooting three black immigrants from Cape Verde, killing two of them, as part of a racially motivated killing spree. The two murders are apparently only part of Luke's plan to kill black, Latino and Jewish people. After being captured by police, he reportedly says he planned to go to an Orthodox synagogue near his home that night and "kill as many Jews as possible." Police say Luke, a white man who apparently had no contact with white supremacists but spent the previous six months reading racist websites, told them he was "fighting for a dying race." Luke also says he formed his racist views in large part after watching videos on Podblanc, a racist video-sharing website run by longtime white supremacist Craig Cobb. When he later appears in court for a hearing, Luke, charged with murder, kidnapping and aggravated rape, has etched a swastika into his own forehead, apparently using a jail razor. He is convicted of first-degree murder in May 2013 and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
April 4, 2009
Three Pittsburgh police officers — Paul Sciullo III, Stephen Mayhle and Eric Kelly — are fatally shot and a fourth, Timothy McManaway, is wounded after responding to a domestic dispute at the home of Richard Andrew Poplawski, who had posted his racist and anti-Semitic views on white supremacist websites. In one post, Poplawski talks about wanting a white supremacist tattoo. He also reportedly tells a friend that America is controlled by a cabal of Jews, that U.S. troops may soon be used against American citizens, and that he fears a ban on guns is coming. Poplawski later allegedly tells investigators that he fired extra bullets into the bodies of two of the officers “just to make sure they were dead” and says he “thought I got that one, too” when told that the fourth officer survived. More law enforcement officers are killed during the incident than in any other single act of violence by a domestic political extremist since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Poplawski is convicted of three counts of first-degree murder in 2011 and sentenced to death.
April 25, 2009
Joshua Cartwright, a Florida National Guardsman, allegedly shoots to death two Okaloosa County, Fla., sheriff's deputies — Burt Lopez and Warren "Skip" York — at a gun range as the officers attempt to arrest Cartwright on domestic violence charges. After fleeing the scene, Cartwright is fatally shot during a gun battle with pursuing officers. Cartwright's wife later tells investigators that her husband was "severely disturbed" that Barack Obama has been elected president. He also reportedly believed the U.S. government was conspiring against him. The sheriff tells reporters that Cartwright had been interested in joining a militia group.
May 31, 2009
Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion extremist who was involved with the antigovernment “freemen” movement in the 1990s, allegedly shoots to death Kansas late-term abortion provider George Tiller as the doctor is serving as an usher in his Wichita church. Adherents of “freemen” ideology claim they are “sovereign citizens” not subject to federal and other laws, and often form their own “common law” courts and issue their own license plates. It was one of those homemade plates that led Topeka police to stop Roeder in April 1996, when a search of his trunk revealed a pound of gunpowder, a 9-volt battery wired to a switch, blasting caps and ammunition. A prosecutor in that case called Roeder a “substantial threat to public safety,” citing Roeder’s refusal to acknowledge the court’s authority. But his conviction in the 1996 case is ultimately overturned. In the Tiller case, Roeder is convicted of first-degree murder in January 2010 and is sentenced to life in prison.
June 10, 2009
Eighty-eight-year-old James von Brunn, a longtime neo-Nazi, walks up to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and shoots to death security guard Stephen Johns before he is himself shot and critically wounded by other officers. Von Brunn, who earlier served six years in connection with his 1981 attempt to kidnap the members of the Federal Reserve Board at the point of a sawed-off shotgun, has been active in the white supremacist movement for more than four decades. In the early 1970s, he worked at the Holocaust-denying Noontide Press, and in subsequent decades, he comes to know many of the key leaders of the radical right. A search of von Brunn’s car after the museum attack turns up a list of other apparent targets, including the White House, the Capitol, the National Cathedral and The Washington Post. A note allegedly left by von Brunn in his car reads: “You want my weapons; this is how you’ll get them … the Holocaust is a lie … Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do. Jews captured America’s money. Jews control the mass media.” Von Brunn is charged with murder but dies in 2010 while awaiting trial.
June 12, 2009
Shawna Forde — the executive director of Minutemen American Defense (MAD), an anti-immigrant vigilante group that conducts “citizen patrols” on the Arizona-Mexico border — is charged with two counts of first-degree murder for her role in the slayings of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter in Arivaca, Ariz. Forde orchestrated the May 30 home invasion because she believed the man was a narcotics trafficker and wanted to steal drugs and cash to fund her group. Authorities say the murders, including the killing of the child, were part of the plan. Also arrested and charged with murder are the alleged triggerman, MAD Operations Director Jason Eugene “Gunny” Bush, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, a local member of MAD. Authorities say that Bush had ties to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations in Idaho, and that Forde has spoken of recruiting its members. Forde is sentenced to death in February 2011, and Bush is sentenced to death in April 2011. Gaxiola is sentenced to life in prison.
June 25, 2009
Longtime white supremacist Dennis Mahon and his brother Daniel are indicted in Arizona in connection with a mail bomb sent in 2004 to a diversity office in Scottsdale that injured three people. Mahon, formerly tied to the neo-Nazi White Aryan Resistance (WAR) group, allegedly left a phone message at the office saying that "the White Aryan Resistance is growing in Scottsdale. There's a few white people who are standing up." In a related raid, agents search the Indiana home of Tom Metzger, founder of WAR, but he is not arrested. On the same day, white supremacist Robert Joos is arrested in rural Missouri, apparently because phone records show that Dennis Mahon's first call after the mail bombing was to Joos' cell phone. Joos is charged with being a felon in possession of firearms and is sentenced in May 2010 to 6½ years in prison. Dennis Mahon is found guilty of three bombing charges in February 2012. He is sentenced to 40 years in prison. Daniel Mahon is acquitted of the one charge against him.
Oct. 28, 2009
Luqman Ameen Abdullah, identified by authorities as a member of a black Muslim group hoping to create an Islamic state within U.S. borders, is shot dead at a warehouse in Dearborn, Mich., after he fires at FBI agents trying to arrest him on conspiracy and weapons charges. The FBI says Abdulla encouraged violence against the United States, adding that 10 other group members are being sought.
Feb. 18, 2010
Joseph Andrew Stack, who had earlier attended meetings of radical anti-tax groups in California, sets fire to his own house and then flies his single-engine plane into an Austin, Texas, building housing IRS offices. Stack and an IRS manager are killed, and 13 others are injured. Stack leaves a long online rant about the IRS and the tax code, politicians and corporations.
March 25, 2010
A man later identified as Brody James Whitaker opens fire on two Florida state troopers during a routine traffic stop on I-75 in Sumter County. Whitaker flees, crashing his vehicle and continuing on foot. He is arrested two weeks later in Connecticut, where he challenges the authority of a judge and declares himself a “sovereign,” not American, citizen. Sovereigns typically believe that police have no right to regulate road travel. Whitaker is later extradited to Florida to face charges of assaulting and fleeing from a police officer. He is sentenced to life in prison in January 2012.
March 27-28, 2010
Nine members of the Hutaree Militia are arrested in raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, and are charged with seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction. The group, whose website said it was preparing for the imminent arrival of the anti-Christ, allegedly planned to murder a Michigan police officer, then use bombs and homemade missiles to kill other officers attending the funeral, all in a bid to set off a war with the government. Joshua Clough pleads guilty to a weapons charge in December 2011. A federal judge dismisses charges against seven members of the group during a trial in March 2012, saying their hatred of law enforcement did not amount to a conspiracy. Militia leader David Stone and his son Joshua Stone plead guilty to gun charges two days after the trial. In August 2012, a federal judge chooses not to send the Stones back to prison. They are each fined $100 and placed on two years’ supervision. Another member, Jacob Ward, is acquitted in 2012.
April 15, 2010
Matthew Fairfield, who is president of a local chapter of an antigovernment “Patriot” organization called the Oath Keepers, is indicted on 28 explosives charges, 25 counts of receiving stolen property and one count of possessing criminal tools. Authorities searching his home discover a napalm bomb built by Fairfield, along with a computer carrying child pornography. Fairfield pleads guilty to explosives charges and is sentenced in May 2011 to 16 years. In September 2011, four years are added for obstruction of justice, to run concurrently with the longer sentence. Prosecutors drop the child pornography charges in exchange for Fairfield’s guilty plea to obstruction.
April 30, 2010
Darren Huff, an Oath Keeper from Georgia, is arrested and charged with planning the armed takeover of a Madisonville, Tenn., courthouse and “arrest” of 24 local, state and federal officials. Authorities say Huff was angry about the April 1 arrest there of Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III, a leader of the far-right American Grand Jury movement that seeks to have grand juries indict President Obama for treason. Several others in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement accuse Huff of white supremacist and anti-Semitic attitudes in Internet postings. He is sentenced in May 2012 to four years in federal prison.
May 10, 2010
Sandlin Matthew Smith detonates a pipe bomb at a rear entrance to a mosque in Jacksonville, Fla., while worshippers are inside. Armed only with a fuzzy videotape, authorities only identify Smith, based on talking to witnesses to whom he admits the attack, a year later. They track Smith, a bus driver from Julington Creek, Fla., to a campsite near Fairview, Okla., where he resists arrest with a gun and is killed. A search of Smith’s two homes turns up explosive materials.
May 20, 2010
A father and son team of “sovereign citizens” who believe police have no right to regulate road travel murder West Memphis, Ark., police officers Robert Brandon Paudert, 39, and Thomas William “Bill” Evans, 38, during a routine traffic stop on an I-40 exit ramp. The incident begins when Jerry Kane, 45, starts to argue with the officers over his bogus vehicle paperwork and then pushes Evans into a roadside ditch. Kane’s 16-year-old son then kills both officers with an AK-47 before the pair flees. Authorities catch up with them about 45 minutes later. In the ensuing shootout, two more officers are badly wounded and both Kanes are killed. The pair had been traveling the country offering seminars in bogus sovereign techniques for avoiding foreclosure and related matters.
July 18, 2010
An unemployed parolee with two bank robbery convictions, apparently enraged at liberals and what he sees as the “left-wing agenda” of Congress, allegedly opens fire on California Highway Patrol troopers who pull him over in Oakland. No one is killed, but two troopers are slightly injured and Byr
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Binks
climber
Uranus
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Jun 12, 2014 - 04:48pm PT
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From Bundy to Bin Laden, gun nuts have an awesome "conservative" track record. Sickos.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, CA
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Jun 12, 2014 - 05:47pm PT
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'Visit to Earth on this Date Not Recommended'
Breaking through the solar heliosphere at light speed the miniature Grokling units and I enjoyed the port view of blue Neptune while my brilliant and voluptuous mate unit, Squizixlenea, monitored the auto navigator to see that we were right on course for our summer of 2330 Earth vacation. Traded for 20,000,000,000,000 keplebics of zirconium, the trip had been a bargain, and the Orion leg of the journey was turning out to be an amazing part of the galaxy.
The outer planets of Sol system were dazzling and our excitement grew with a close flyby of Mars, but as we neared Earth the alarms sounded. “Wormhole time adjustment error, error, error!!” the Automaguide announced. After checking our monitors, it was just as we had feared. The time period of our visit was off by more than 300 years and it was 2015 on our sunny little blue destination at present. “Landing on earth during this time period would expose Groklings to abnormally high dosages of radiation and toxic airborne heavy metal pollutants and is not recommended,” our guide informed us. “Also the populace of humanoid hosts exhibits an unusually high proclivity for homicidal tendencies to settle their temporary petty disagreements with violence, and the likelihood of death by high speed projectile appears eminent. A visit to Earth on this date is not recommended”
“Oh but Natoo, you promised we could see an elephant,” the little Groklings whined. There was an awesome Supernova of Betelgeuse about to happen which we were happy not to miss and the little blue planet of Earth would still be there in our own time period next time we planned a visit, less 6,000,000 of those pesky humans.
-Bushman
06/12/2014
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Jun 12, 2014 - 05:54pm PT
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Monty Python knows the best way to commit suicide.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Again for most reasonable people this debate is over what are the reasonable restrictions that should be place on firearms. Personally I think California's are good for the most part and should be applied nationwide.
But the NRA won't agree to ANY reasonable restrictions like expanded background checks. They won't even agree to us doing what it takes to help try to keep guns out of the hands of the crazies. The are MANY more extreme NRA types than the few percent of peaceniks who think we should take away all guns. But like most right wingers they will portray anyone in support of sticter gun regulations as an extreme left wing peacenik who wants all guns outlawed. Because it's much easier to argue against a straw man.
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Jun 12, 2014 - 06:16pm PT
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One survived as a pure fluke of her giant boob holding compression on the chest wound while she was down.
I love this forum.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Jun 13, 2014 - 11:50am PT
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Just when you got sick of standing in line at the TSA airport check.
LOTS more of our fellow travelers are packing for the airport, so to speak. So far this year (as of the end of last week), the Transportation Security Administration has found 892 guns in passengers’ carry-on bags at security checkpoints. That’s a 19 percent increase from the comparable period of last year, when the total was 750 guns.
The 2013 gun-tote tally was a record, at 1,813 firearms found, incidentally. As this year’s gun haul keeps rolling along, a one-day record was set just last Wednesday, when screeners found 18 guns, which beat the previous one-day record of 13 guns on May 20, 2013. About 80 percent of all guns found are loaded. NOTE: these are not the guns packed in baggage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/business/tsa-charts-a-rise-in-guns-at-checkpoints.html?_r=2
Just the facts Ma'am.
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7SacredPools
Trad climber
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
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Jun 14, 2014 - 08:51pm PT
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7SacredPools
Trad climber
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
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Powerful stuff Stahlbro.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Partly as a result of this very thread, I've now purchased an H&K P30 .40, and I'm open-carrying it everywhere. My wife also shoots it (it's a pretty powerful gun for her, but she can HIT with it!), and we're about to apply for our Colorado CCWs. Even once I have the CCW, I'll probably open-carry 1/3 to 1/2 the time, whichever is most convenient or makes the most tactical sense for the situation.
Here in Colorado, people have so far had only positive things to say about it. People here actually want an armed citizenry. Even our dem-liberal governor is back-peddling literally as fast as he can from his ill-fated and downright stupid foray into gun control. What gun-control there was in Colorado is soon to go away, returning us to one of the best states in the country!
It's been decades since I was a shooter, but it's quickly coming back. It's only been not quite two weeks, and I can already consistently do 50% 3-inch group and 80% 6-inch group from 25 yards (100% 8-inch group). In short, I'm going to hit a very bad spot in the torso 100% of the time from far farther out than most defensive shootings take place. Look at the distance in the grandpa video above. At 25 yards, the targets I use appear much smaller than my thumbnail.
I've always loved shooting, so thanks guys for helping get me back into it! Colorado is just a tiny bit safer now than it was, and I wish that virtually all of my fellow citizens would follow suit.
What really pushed me over the edge was about two weeks ago a broad-daylight mugging at an ATM just across the street from our office. I had thought of our area as a very decent and safe part of Denver-metro. It seems that the bottom-feeders can surface anywhere! If the female victim had been armed, the odds are high that she would have kept her money, and the mugger would have had his criminal ways put to an end.
I don't intend for either me or my wife to be helplessly victimized. And open-carry is a well-known deterrent. Like a locked door, the sight of a gun tells a bottom-feeder, "Keep scrounging for easier pickings." And if a bottom-feeder saw even 20% of people around the putative crime scene were armed, he is going to take his plans elsewhere rather than risk being shot by a bystander.
And "elsewhere" is all we want!
It's time to drive these creeps outta town. Just displaying the capacity to defend yourself and others helps move them elsewhere, such as California, NY, NJ, DC, or Chicago, where they can count on a completely unarmed citizenry.
Meanwhile, my wife and I will keep training. I want 100% 3-inch group at 25 yards. And there's lots more to it than pure marksmanship! But it's very satisfying on many levels.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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what happens if the female ATM victim whips out her piece and the junkie mugger whips out his pistol too? Guess we might have a dead female victim?
So, let me be sure I understand what you are saying here.
"Better to accept a life of victim-mentality than to risk dying by refusing to live like a victim." Is that it?
So, the thinking that founded this country is now completely gone? "Give me liberty or give me death?" We just don't live by anything like that anymore?
Well, maybe some of you can "live" like a victim and "hope for the best," but not many of us.
Men tend to shoot better
Are you serious?
And you mean that even the "junkie mugger" is a better shot?
LOL... you should see the WOMEN I see at the range! MOST people that are packing are well-practiced and well-trained (many put in more hours in training than do cops). They take it seriously. By contrast, "junkie mugger" stole his piece or bought it from some other slimeball, and he probably hasn't even fired it once. He waves it around for intimidation value and hopes it will fire if he ever "needed" it to.
I think you've got the "likely" scenario totally reversed.
"Junkie mugger" would be dropping to the ground, his body not responding as desired, as his last trickle of conscious thought would be something like, "...wtf?"
But, of course, the victim mentality can't bring itself to take ANY risk. Its motto is: "Better to live groveling on your face than die on your feet."
Oh, and where IS that cop when you need one? As the saying goes: When seconds count, the cops are mere minutes away. The "manhunt" is still on for this "junkie mugger," weeks later, but he won't be caught regarding this incident. He'll keep working his game... until somebody puts him down.
And in Colorado, somebody probably will put him down, which is how this SHOULD play out.
This fact is why 56 of 62 Sheriffs in Colorado filed suit to overturn the recent gun-control laws, why they said they would not enforce the laws, and why Colorado is a shall-issue CCW state. This fact is why two state politicians got recalled, a third resigned before the infamy of a recall, and why the governor is now publicly stating that he is looking forward to undoing his "ill-considered" mistake asap (only way he has a HOPE of keeping his job).
Wild horses and a million dollar offer could not drag me back to California, or to any of the other "safe" gun-control states that actually have the highest incidence of gun homicides and other violent crimes. Yeah, all your gun control has sure made Chicago, LA, DC, and other such places really, really safe. You can have that "safety." I (and my wife) prefer to live in a state where personal responsibility still means something.
LOL
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couchmaster
climber
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How many people were killed during Maos reign again Randisi? Do you think that they were glad they were unarmed? It's curious that the biggest genocides tend to be in unarmed societies.
Let us examine "The worst genocides of the 20th and 21st Centuries"
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html
....And it's Mao for the win! The British newspaper Independant suggests ONLY 45,000,000 murdered by Mao and his minions, wheras that links suggests 49,000,000-78,000,000 were murdered and killed. A million murdered here...a million murdered there, pretty soon it's big numbers of dead.
So there is that but I'm glad you feel safe. But consider that you are worried about a single loonie running in the streets whereas I am much more concerned about a single loonie running the country. For that very reason I feel safer when people like madbolter are armed, it only takes one loonie like Mao, like Pol Pot, like Hitler, like Stalin, like Idi Amin, like insert name here etc etc etc etc) to get elected (or wiggle their way into office) to see that kind of mass murder occur. In my view it's nice to not be unarmed and preyed on by an armed government. The 2nd amendment is the amendment that gives the other ones teeth.
BTW, speaking of freedoms, you don't really know how safe you are or are not as China rigorously cracks down on what news can be reported. So I guess you'd do better living in the US if you just turned off your news/TV sources. There's another freedom, the first amendment of free speech, you don't get in China. Personally, I like China. It's an amazing place full of incredible folks. I like France as well. I feel as safe in those countries as in my own. But you have no idea how safe or unsafe it is in China as you don't get it reported.
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couchmaster
climber
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Hardly pointless. Review why the fourth of July was just celebrated for example. Here's some info to consider vis a vis our version of what we believe freedom to be: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/maos-great-leap-forward-killed-45-million-in-four-years-2081630.html
"Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday."
Have you read up on this over there? Nope, didn't think so. Pick most of the amendments and you won't find a corollary in China. So congrats on that, AND you get to feel safe too. Not actually be safe if you choose to be an independent thinker or pick the wrong religion however. It is not some ancient history long in the past either. If you Google "Falen Gong" you won't see anything if you are in China most likely but in the rest of the world we see things like this crap below. This is what incorrect thinking gets you in China, originating from a Falen Gong practitioner:
"Here's some illustrations of Torture Methods Used to Persecute Falun Gong Practitioners (9 - 12)
(from Clearwisdom.net)
Torture Method 9: "Feeding the Insects"
(Caption: Police say, "Whoever does not obey us will be tied up outside as food for the mosquitoes!"
In the summer time, especially around dusk or dawn, the police strip practitioners of every piece of their clothing and handcuff them to a pole in a place where mosquitoes and other insects swarm. Practitioners are bitten over and over again all over their bodies by various insects. Not long after, their bare skin is covered with itchy bumps. Sometimes they cannot even open their eyes because their eyelids are so swollen.
This torture was often used by gangs of bandits in the past to punish captives who violated their rules. Sometimes people even died from being bitten by poisonous insects. Now this torture is used by police in Chinese labor camps to torture innocent people who believe in "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance."
Torture Method 10: Pouring Freezing Cold Water Over People
In the freezing cold winter, the police instigate criminals to keep pouring cold water on practitioners, causing them to be frozen, suffer frostbite and numbness. Sometimes part or all of their body would become paralyzed. Some people even suffer loss of speech and memory.
Torture Method 11: Electric Shocks
(Caption: the prison doctor says, "Captain, he has passed out. The voltage won't go any higher. What shall I do?")
What is displayed here is called the electric needle. The police can adjust the electric current and voltage at will. If the voltage and current is high, the victim would bounce on the bed from the shock. He would suffer cramps all over his body and incontinence of his bladder and bowels. If the victim has a weak heart, he could easily die on the spot. Many practitioners on hunger strike are repeatedly subjected to such torture.
Other similar torture methods include: long-term shocking with high-voltage electric batons, cranking a hand-crank telephone to generate electricity to shock practitioners who are tied to with the telephone, using medical devices to generate electricity to shock practitioners, lining the walls and top of a small cage with electric needles to shock practitioners who relax or drift off to sleep while chained up bent over, unable to completely stand, squat or sit (a cruel form of sleep deprivation torture that is sometimes used for weeks on end), etc.
In order to achieve their goal, sometimes the police employ various means to make practitioners suffer even more. For instance, they shock practitioners with many electric batons simultaneously; they soak practitioners in water and then shock them; or shock sensitive parts of the body, including eyelids, soles of the feet, armpits, neck, etc. After the electric shock, the skin would be badly burnt, develop blisters and even fester. Such torture also causes damage to the internal organs and nervous system. Also, the victim suffers from psychological trauma.
What's more despicable is that the police shock practitioners' mouths, private parts and anus for long periods of time. They even shock female practitioners' breasts and private parts, sexually violating them while shocking them with the electro-shock batons.
Torture Method 12: Stabbing with sharp objects
The police use a screwdriver or other sharp object to stab the back of practitioners' hands, attempting to force them to give up their belief in Dafa. The victim will bleed profusely and often pass out due to the excruciating pain.
Such torture is extremely brutal. Other similar means include: nailing bamboo spikes into practitioners' fingers, chopping [hitting] practitioners' hands with hard-soled shoes, hammering practitioners' hands with a hammer or drilling into practitioners' hands with an electric drill.
2004-5-27"
if you read chinese one can get a clearer picture here: http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/5/28/75748.html
Bottom line, being a Christian is incorrect thinking subjecting you to torture. However, in China, they are spared such pointless bickering. Be safe indeed.
Regards
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