Armed Bundy Invaders now have to deal with Un-armed Invaders

Not much can be said about a group of people who think that just because they own and can fire a gun, they have the right to invade another’s town, squat on a piece of land that they do not and will never own and make demands on behalf of that town residents that don’t even want them there but a lot can be said for a group of invaders who come to that same town unarmed and demand that those occupying it with guns, leave and go home.

This is the predicament that the Ammon Bundy group finds itself in as reported by the article titled “Standoff on Oregon Land Inspires a Counterprotest by Kirk Johnsonian.  In it he reports; “Tensions have run high in eastern Oregon since an armed group seized the headquarters of a national wildlife refuge early this month, but the primary opponents in the standoff have been pretty clear cut: The antigovernment protesters are facing off against law enforcement agents, who are trying to figure out a peaceful end to the illegal occupation.  But in recent days, as the standoff has dragged toward its third week, a new element has been added to the chemistry: counterprotesters who are converging here to denounce the occupying faction — in person at the refuge headquarters — and demand that federal public lands remain open for all. The newcomers include environmental activists, retired federal workers and a couple of long-distance hikers.  At first, when a band of armed men and women led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy seized the refuge’s headquarters, they sought support from the local community for their demand that millions of acres of federal land be placed in local, state or private hands. Instead, community leaders asked the Bundy group to leave. F.B.I. agents and sheriff’s deputies from around Oregon then converged in the nearby town of Burns.  Some in the Malheur takeover group have not liked the new incursion very much, as small as it has been. On a recent morning, a spokesman for the occupiers — gun on hip, cowboy hat on head — was calmly addressing reporters at a news conference when a small but visible tussle started unfolding in view of television cameras.  Another opposition demonstrator, Candy Henderson, has been roughing it in a tent a few miles from where that exchange occurred. Ms. Henderson, 64, a retired horse trainer from Walla Walla, Wash., arrived last weekend and found that there were no motel rooms available because so many people had already been drawn there.  “I don’t like crowds, don’t like to be around people, I usually stay to myself,” she said, sitting on a picnic bench at campground, bundled up with layers against the cold.  “But this is so important and I feel so passionate about this, I had to come,” she said,  Ms. Henderson said she had to leave for six weeks of radiation starting early next month at a hospital in Houston, but planned to return to Oregon, and her tent, after that if the antigovernment group’s takeover continues.  “I’m going to come back and I’m going to stay until they are gone,” she said.

The lesson here is you don’t need a weapon to make your point and get attention; all you need is a good strong back and very large shoulders to hold those up that you see need assistance in standing up.  These new invaders have come to not war with those armed invaders but simply to say, you do not, will not and never speak for us all.  This is a powerful lesson and is often sorely needed when bullies think that just because their muscles are bigger that their ideas are best especially when that muscle is not part of their body but comes in the form of a gun.  Sometimes, it’s the steel in your spine that wins the day instead of the steel in a gun barrel.