For
years, Garry Watson, 49, of little Bunker, Mo., (population 390) had been
squabbling with town officials over the sewage line easement which ran across
his property to the adjoining, town-operated sewage lagoon.
Residents say officials grew dissatisfied with their existing easement, and
announced they were going to excavate a new sewer line across the landowner's
property. Capt. Chris Ricks of the Missouri Highway Patrol reports Watson's
wife, Linda, was served with "easement right-of-way papers" on Sept.
6. She gave the papers to Watson when he got home at 5 a.m. the next morning
from his job at a car battery recycling plant northeast of Bunker. Watson
reportedly went to bed for a short time, but arose about 7 a.m. when the city
work crew arrived.
"He told them 'If you come on my land, I'll kill you,' " Bunker
resident Gregg Tivnan told me last week. "Then the three city workers
showed up with a backhoe, plus a police officer. They'd sent along a cop in a
cop car to guard the workers, because they were afraid there might be trouble.
Watson had gone inside for a little while, but then he came out and pulled his
SKS (semi-automatic rifle) out of his truck, steadied it against the truck, and
he shot them."
Killed in the Sept. 7 incident, from a range of about 85 yards, were Rocky B.
Gordon, 34, a city maintenance man, and David Thompson, 44, an alderman who
supervised public works. City maintenance worker Delmar Eugene Dunn, 51,
remained in serious but stable condition the following weekend. Bunker police
Officer Steve Stoops, who drove away from the scene after being shot, was
treated and released from a hospital for a bullet wound to his arm and a graze
to the neck.
Watson thereupon kissed his wife goodbye, took his rifle, and disappeared
into the woods, where his body was found two days later -- dead of an apparently
self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Following such incidents, the local papers are inevitably filled with
well-meaning but mawkish doggerel about the townsfolk "pulling
together" and attempting to "heal" following the
"tragedy." There are endless expressions of frustration, pretending to
ask how such an otherwise peaceful member of the community could "just snap
like that."
In fact, the supposedly elusive explanation is right before our eyes.
"He was pushed," Clarence Rosemann -- manager of the local Bunker
convenience store, who'd done some excavation work for Watson -- told the
big-city reporters from St. Louis.
Another area resident, who didn't want to be identified, told the visiting
newsmen, "Most people are understanding why Garry Watson was upset. They
are wishing he didn't do it, but they are understanding why he did it."
You see, to most of the people who work in government and the media these
days -- especially in our urban centers -- "private property" is a
concept out of some dusty, 18th century history book. Oh, sure, "property
owners" are allowed to (start ital)live(end ital) on their land, so long as
they pay rent to the state in the form of "property taxes."
But an actual "right" to be let alone on our land to do whatever we
please -- always providing we don't actually endanger the lives or health of our
neighbors?
Heavens! If we allowed that, how would we enforce all our wonderful new
"environmental protection" laws, or the "zoning codes," or
the laws against growing hemp or tobacco or distilling whisky without a license,
or any of the endless parade of other malum prohibitum decrees which have
multiplied like swarms of flying ants in this nation over the past 87 years?
What does it mean to say we have any "rights" or
"freedoms" at all, if we cannot peacefully enjoy that property which
we buy with the fruits of our labors? In his 1985 book "Takings,"
University of Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein wrote that, "Private
property gives the right to exclude others without the need for any
justification. Indeed, it is the ability to act at will and without need for
justification within some domain which is the essence of freedom, be it of
speech or of property."
"Unfortunately," replies James Bovard, author of the book
"Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the
Citizen," "federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors are making
private property much less private. ... Park Forest, Ill. in 1994 enacted an
ordinance that authorizes warrantless searches of every single-family rental
home by a city inspector or police officer, who are authorized to invade rental
units 'at all reasonable times.' ... Federal Judge Joan Gottschall struck down
the searches as unconstitutional in 1998, but her decision will have little or
no effect on the numerous other localities that authorize similar invasions of
privacy."
We are now involved in a war in this nation, a last-ditch struggle in which
the other side contends only the king's men are allowed to use force or the
threat of force to push their way in wherever they please, and that any peasant
finally rendered so desperate as to employ the same kind of force routinely
employed by our oppressors must surely be a "lone madman" who
"snapped for no reason."
No, we should not and do not endorse or approve the individual choices of
folks like Garry Watson. But we are still obliged to honor their memories and
the personal courage it takes to fight and die for a principle, even as we
lament both their desperate, misguided actions ... and the systematic erosion of
our liberties which gave them rise.
"Just because one government agent has a piece of paper that's signed by
another government agent, does that mean there's no more right to private
property?" asks my friend Gregg Tivnan.
"If statists fear popular resistance," replies Jim Bovard,
"perhaps government should violate fewer rights."
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal, and editor of Financial Privacy Report (subscribe by calling
Norm at 612-895-8757.) His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or
via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
vin@lvrj.com
