Armed Militia seizes control of federal building in Oregon

[OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire]

What I first read about this case said that the two men had already served prison time, but a judge didn't think it was enough punishment. I don't find the excuse of burning grasslands to stop/weaken future wildfires to be a bad one. We do have controlled burning of forests for the same reasons too. They just should've contacted the government to do it. I will say this, as a resident or Oregon even I didn't know how much federal lands we had. The border between the different kinds can be difficult to tell, especially in states like Nevada where most of the state is federal land.

 

[Kanzler]

What I first read about this case said that the two men had already served prison time, but a judge didn't think it was enough punishment. I don't find the excuse of burning grasslands to stop/weaken future wildfires to be a bad one. We do have controlled burning of forests for the same reasons too. They just should've contacted the government to do it. I will say this, as a resident or Oregon even I didn't know how much federal lands we had. The border between the different kinds can be difficult to tell, especially in states like Nevada where most of the state is federal land.

The judge didn't think it was enough punishment because the trial judge didn't apply the mandatory minimum sentence for arson even though what the two men did was clearly arson! The trial judge needed a good reason to not apply a minimum sentence for a federal felony and he didn't have one, which is why his original sentence was overturned.

Anyways, what they did was burn federal land which has other users and did not belong to them. Nobody else knew about it and lives could have been endangered, including those of the volunteer firefighters who had to put it out. If they coordinated with the local authorities to work something out, then that could have been fine - everybody worth informing about a possible fire would have been informed. But they didn't. In fact they kind of did everything in their power to avoid working with the local authorities, including showing up with guns to a meeting and also vowing never to work with the authorities because logic right?

They never got in trouble for the first time they burnt federal land, but they decided to do it two more times after they were contacted for their first fire... which at that point is simply asking for it.