Being one of the staunchest defenders of the Bill of Rights and our inalienable God-given rights, I have always been particularly incensed and angered each time I reflect back over these past events and the manner in which the government agents reacted. Afterwards, it was always the same tired refrain of “the officers were following the law“, “we were only following orders” or “they acted against orders” and in the meantime, good and decent Americans still lay in their graves, deprived of life and joys they would still be experiencing today, since I’m certain that at least LaVoy and Ashli were both young enough that they would be alive today had it not been for trigger-happy, scared-of-their shadow cowards or simply evil government agents far too eager to take another American’s life simply because he or she stood up for what is right, good and decent.

“As the bullet crashed through her head, she slumped to her knees, holding Elisheba so she would not drop her. We took the baby from her as she lay dead and bleeding on our kitchen floor.” Those words, spoken by Randy Weaver before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 6th 1995, still echo like a rifle shot across the American conscience. A Christian mother – not a white supremacist as some reports tried to portray her – standing in the doorway of her own home holding her infant daughter, gunned down without warning by an FBI sniper. Her 14-year-old son Sammy, shot in the back while running home after federal agents killed the family dog. This was not some distant battlefield in a foreign war. This was Ruby Ridge, Idaho, August 1992, almost thirty-four years ago – American soil, American blood, shed by agents of the very government sworn to protect the God-given rights enshrined in our Constitution.

As we approach the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the weight of these tragedies presses upon every liberty-loving soul. Timothy McVeigh’s monstrous act on April 19th 1995, which claimed 168 innocent lives including 19 children, was indefensible evil. Yet McVeigh himself cited the federal outrages at Ruby Ridge and Waco as his twisted justification. A government that wages war on its own people sows the seeds of chaos, even as it condemns the harvest. From a conservative, Christian, limited-government perspective, these events reveal a deeper rot: the FBI, ATF, and the permanent bureaucratic state have repeatedly revealed themselves not as guardians of liberty, but as its most persistent domestic adversaries. They trample the Bill of Rights with impunity, serving entrenched power rather than “We the People.”

The Illegitimate Birth of a Secret Police

The FBI did not arise from noble necessity to combat rampant crime. Its origins trace to an act of executive defiance. In 1901, President William McKinley fell to an assassin’s bullet. Theodore Roosevelt ascended, and his Attorney General Charles Bonaparte — grandnephew of Napoleon — sought to create a force of special agents within the Department of Justice. Congress saw the danger clearly. In the spring of 1908, Bonaparte requested funding. House members, Democrats and Republicans alike, condemned it as the blueprint for a “system of espionage” akin to the Tsar’s secret police. They explicitly forbade it. Bonaparte waited until Congress recessed for summer, created the Bureau anyway, and buried the admission in a later report: “It became necessary for the department to organize a small force of special agents of its own.”

Thus, the FBI was born in contempt of Congress and the separation of powers. From the start, it targeted perceived threats — first anarchists, then anti-war voices under Woodrow Wilson. It recruited informants, conducted black-bag jobs, intercepted mail, and wiretapped citizens. Over decades, it shifted from serving the President to serving itself and the Washington establishment. COINTELPRO operations in the 1950s-70s incited violence between groups and disrupted organizations the Bureau disliked. This was not law enforcement; it was domestic intelligence warfare against the American people.

Ruby Ridge: The Murder of Innocents

No case better illustrates this than Ruby Ridge. Randy Weaver, a former Green Beret and devout Christian, sought a quiet life off-grid in northern Idaho with his wife Vicki and family, wary of a corrupt world. He sold two sawed-off shotguns to an undercover informant — entrapment tactics familiar to those who study federal “investigations.” When he refused to become an informant, charges followed. A court date was botched; Weaver stayed put. Federal agents surrounded the cabin. On August 21st 1992, they shot the family dog. Sammy Weaver, 14, fired in defense and was shot in the back while fleeing home. The next day, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi, under rules of engagement later deemed unconstitutional, fired through the doorway, killing Vicki Weaver as she held baby Elisheba.

Imagine being fourteen years old, living off the grid in the Idaho woods in 1993. You’re walking your dog in the woods when “BOOM”, the dog is shot and killed. You look around to see a man – a stranger – in combat camouflage pointing his rifle at you, and reacting with natural fear, you bring your rifle to aim and fire. You’re just defending yourself. This is your home.

You run away towards the safety of your family and your parents, only to be shot in the back and killed before you can reach them. You never understand exactly what was happening or why, as you hit the ground with your breath and life leaving your body, afraid and alone.

The next day, an FBI sniper fires again. Your mother, standing in the doorway holding your baby sister, is hit in the head and killed instantly.

Randy Weaver’s Senate testimony rings with righteous pain: agents violated direct orders not to harm children, shredded documents, and covered up. No federal agent faced meaningful justice for the deaths. The government paid millions in settlements, admitting wrongdoing in civil court, yet the precedent was set: federal power could kill with near-impunity. Vicki Weaver was no threat. She held no weapon. She simply stood in her home, exercising the God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on her own property. This was not enforcement of law; it was tyranny with a badge.

Waco and the Fires of April 19

One year later, on April 19th 1993, the horrors compounded at Waco, Texas. The Branch Davidians, a religious group, faced ATF allegations of illegal weapons. A botched raid led to a 51-day siege. What followed — CS gas insertions, tanks crushing the compound, and a fire that killed 76 people including many women and children — remains a scar on the Republic. While the group had its own failings, the federal response escalated tragedy into massacre. McVeigh timed Oklahoma City to the anniversary, calling it retribution. Evil does not justify evil, and any just government would do all it could in order to not create martyrs through overreach.

True, rumors of child rape and abuse had filtered throughout the Waco community, as the regular citizens viewed the cult leader with suspicion, but there had been numerous other occasions when David Koresh could have been arrested and taken into custody during one of his numerous forays into town. As far as the allegations of “illegal firearms” in the possession of the Branch Davidians, I have long contended that as far as righteous law and the U.S. Constitution is concerned, there is no such thing as an illegal firearm where no crime has been committed and it is carried for the righteous and lawful purpose of self-defense. And as events proved, it seems these folks had good reason to keep and bear arms.

These events fueled a generation’s distrust. Patriots saw not rogue agents, but a pattern: Big Government viewing armed, self-reliant, often Christian Americans as existential threats.

And Republicans have happily kept funding both the ATF and the FBI for decades since.

It is an interesting detail – and one that poses difficulties for the central planners – that at the end of the day, the initial ATF attack had to withdraw. I think that’s why they couldn’t let this resolve any other way. The story had to be about how resistance is ultimately futile, not that the controllers have real resource constraints on their ability to project power in America.

It’s perfectly fine for the government to murder dozens of innocent men, women and children as long as they have a tiny suspicion that something’s a bit off and not quite right with a certain situation, right? Same as it ever was, or so it does seem.

A fine patriotic associate of mine, who writes under the pseudonym of Hardscrabble Farmer, would later note:

“I was working at comedy club in Dayton, Ohio with Brian Bradley. Every morning after breakfast we’d pick up a bunch of newspapers and put on the news and write current event jokes. We were sitting in the hotel watching CNN’s coverage of the siege when we saw them drive the armored vehicle into the front of the main house and set it on fire. That was the I want a divorce moment from the US Government even if I didn’t realize it at the time.”

Property Rights, Entrapment, and Modern Martyrs

Fast forward to the Bundy standoffs. Cliven Bundy and his family had long been targeted by the federal government and he had been fighting them over property and grazing rights for nearly twenty years, when the fight intensified in April of 2014 and went on until 2018, when a mistrial was declared after it was learned that the prosecution had withheld approximately 3300 documents from the defense. And most troubling, it was also revealed that the Bundy family members had told the truth when they first alleged that FBI snipers had set up positions all around their property, before thousands of their friends and supporters arrived with arms to prevent the Bureau of Land Management from illegally seizing their herd of cattle, and the Bundys had acted in self-defense.

The government lied.

Then LaVoy Finicum. On January 26th 2016, this grandfather, rancher, and peaceful protester for constitutional rights — occupying the Malheur Refuge in support of the Hammonds — sought safe passage as promised. Shot dead on a lonely Oregon highway after reaching for a weapon only after being fired upon (with FBI agents later caught in inconsistencies and one indicted for lying about shots). Video shows hands raised, yet deadly force used. The murder of LaVoy spilled the kindred blood that flows in the veins of all American patriots — another patriot’s blood on federal hands.

Ashli Babbitt’s murder was committed by Lt. Michael Byrd, a Capitol police officer, and it exhibits the endemic problem one finds in heavy Democrat Party controlled areas like D.C. – the same as seen throughout the ranks of the FBI – with a known bias against conservatives, especially Trump supporters like Ms. Babbitt, a 14 year Veteran of the U.S. Air Force. Ms. Babbitt, at 5′ 2″ and 115 pounds, was trying to control violent protestors, and she was unarmed when she attempted to pass through a broken window of a door inside the Capitol Building, after several police officers stepped aside and seemed to have no real concerns over her actions. And then she was shot without warning, from all the evidence, despite Byrd’s claims to the contrary, after which, there was only a cursory in-house investigationwithout any independent outside investigation and Byrd’s “exoneration”.

Contrast the treatment of conservative protestors with Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA rioters or “protestors”.

The FBI’s entrapment playbook — pressuring vulnerable individuals into plots, as in the Michigan governor “kidnapping” case — reveals a agency manufacturing threats to justify its existence. Informants outnumber actual radicals. January 6th saw heavy federal presence and questions about provocation that remain unanswered.

FISA: Weaponized Surveillance Against Americans

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, meant for foreigners, metastasized into mass surveillance of Americans. The Obama administration’s use against the Trump campaign — via the Clinton-funded Steele Dossier, unmasked by Susan Rice — epitomizes abuse. Carter Page warrants rested on falsehoods. President Trump’s most recent support for reauthorization has both puzzled and disappointed many liberty advocates. Spy on genuine foreign threats with cause, yes. But end the domestic dragnet. The Fourth Amendment — “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” — lies in tatters.

Along with this, over the decades the FBI has largely become the domain of weak, feckless, self-serving agents who, for one reason or another, have strong loyalties to the so-called “elites” of the Democrat Party, probably because many of them, like Peter Strzok, have received socialist-leaning educations and indoctrination from schools like Georgetown University or Chicago Law School, James Comey’s old alma mater. And as such, of late, it has also become commonplace to see them abuse their authority and power to commit illegal acts, up to and including interfering with the U.S. federal election process, committing perjury themselves under oath and manufacturing false crimes against political opponents, having allowed themselves to be weaponized against conservative America — although the current director, Kash Patel is supposedly purging the FBI ranks of bad actors as we speak.

The Second Amendment and Inalienable Rights

From Jefferson quoting Beccaria: “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.” As I have stated since my earliest adulthood days, having learned the rightness of the principle from my father, who was a Combat Veteran of three wars, I will never comply with illegal, unconstitutional gun restrictions. The right to keep and bear arms is not government-granted but God-given for self-defense, against tyranny, and as the ultimate check on federal overreach — the Second Amendment is the guardian of all other amendments in the Bill of Rights and every American’s Inalienable God-given Rights.

The full Bill of Rights has suffered sorely over the past two decades: First Amendment chilled by labeling dissent “extremism”; flags like Betsy Ross or Gadsden deemed “Militia Violent Extremist” symbols; Fifth and Sixth Amendment due process twisted in entrapment and withheld evidence; Eighth Amendment via prolonged pre-trial detention for J6 defendants. Ninth and Tenth — reserved powers to the people and states — ignored as the administrative state swells.

A Christian, Conservative Reckoning

As Christians, we recall that governments are ordained by God for good (Romans 13), but when they become a terror to good works, resistance in defense of natural rights is moral. Our Founders pledged lives, fortunes, and sacred honor against tyranny. Limited government is not anarchy but ordered liberty under God. The permanent bureaucracy — FBI, ATF foremost — has become an enemy within, loyal to elites, often educated in progressive strongholds, weaponized against conservatives, Christians, and constitutionalists.

For the most part, most conservative and independent Americans aren’t against government intrinsically, but we are against Big Government and we’re against tyranny. And we especially don’t like it when we see the federal government overreaching its authority and threatening, intimidating, harming and even murdering our people when they’ve committed no crime and done no real harm, much as we see in the cases of Randy, Weaver, Cliven Bundy, LaVoy Finicum and Ashli Babbitt.

Colonel Bo Gritz, veteran warrior, would decry this as betrayal of the oath. John Ringo’s heroes fight for hearth and home against government overweening overreach to take and hold power. General W.G. “Jerry” Boykin, a man of deep faith and Special Forces valor, would call us to spiritual armor alongside civic duty. We are not against government, but Big Government divorced from constitutional limits and Christian morality.

The solution? Dismantle the FBI’s domestic intelligence monster. Return policing to states and localities, accountable to the people. Enforce the Posse Comitatus spirit. End qualified immunity abuses. Prosecute rogue agents. Reassert the Founders’ vision: a Republic of sovereign individuals, armed, faithful, vigilant.

Randy Weaver was simply a Christian man, a former Green Beret who had moved his family to Ruby Ridge, Idaho, because he believed the world was just more corrupt and dangerous a place than he wanted his children to have to see. He held anti-government views but he wasn’t a white supremacist or a member of the Aryan nation as alleged by government prosecutors. He was shot that same August day as his wife Vicky, and he survived to beat the weapons charges that had essentially been manufactured against him and proceed to win a hefty settlement from the U.S. government for his three daughters, in the sum of three million dollars. But that’s not nearly enough for the lives cold-blooded FBI agents took so unnecessarily, when all was said and done.

As we recall that hundreds of people were forced to sit in jail for supposedly joining in an insurrection on January 6th 2021, many left there without bail for months, we should never forget Randy Weaver’s words from his 1995 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which now takes on an even greater significance as he exclaimed:

“[The U.S. Marshalls and the FBI] were under direct orders from Washington to do nothing to injure the children. They were to have no contact or confrontation with me or my family. They killed him [Sammy] anyway in violation of their orders. …

Nothing I did caused Federal agents to violate the Constitution of the United States. I did not cause Federal agents to violate the oath of their office. My actions did not cause Federal agents to violate State and Federal law. My behavior did not cause Federal agents to violate their own agency policies. Federal agents admitted to illegal acts. Judge Freeh, the head if the FBI, has made statements to the press that the so-called rules of engagement were unconstitutional. Federal agents have tried to cover up their illegal actions. That was their choice, not mine. I have been accountable for my choices. They should be held accountable for their wrongs. But no Federal agent has been brought to justice for the killings of Sam and Vicki Weaver.

In fact, agents of the FBI have been part of the coverup of what really happened. One, after flunking a lie detector test, has admitted shredding documents that might clear up who authorized the death warrants on my family. I feel I have a right to know who gave the shoot-on-sight orders and who approved them.”

Randy Weaver’s words demand accountability: “Federal agents have tried to cover up their illegal actions… They should be held accountable for their wrongs.” Yet few have been. The beast grows bolder, labeling heritage as extremism.

To every agent tempted by power: Remember your oath to the Constitution, not political masters. To patriots: Stay educated, prayerful, armed with truth and, yes, the means of self-defense. Fly the Gadsden flag proudly — “Don’t Tread on Me.” Live free. Defend liberty peacefully first, but recognize that tyranny unchecked invites the righteous response of free men.

The Oklahoma City anniversary reminds us: Government overreach breeds resentment. True justice demands reform — abolish the abuses, restore the Republic. May God bless America, and may Americans rediscover the courage to keep her free. The blood of Vicki Weaver, Sammy, LaVoy, and others cries out. We must answer with vigilance, faith, and unyielding commitment to limited government under God. And if matters descend to the lowest common denominator in the dys and years ahead, we must not hesitate to pick up our rifles in defense of our families and others, when we know ourselves to be in the right and acting in defense of our right to live free.

Just remember: The U.S. Government Is Not Your Friend!

April 20, 2026

~ the Author ~
Justin O. Smith Has Lived in Tennessee Off and on Most of His Adult Life, and Graduated From Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, With a B.S. And a Double Major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – Minors in Military Science and English, for What Its Worth. His Real Education Started From That Point on. Smith Is a Frequent Contributor to the Family of Kettle Moraine Publications.