I feel bad for Bundy's neighbors. I shudder to think what will happen when someone (probably a teenaged male) blows through the "checkpoints" these armed assholes set up. Whoever does it will be perfectly within their rights to ignore these yahoos, but will probably wind up dead anyway. Then all hell will break loose.
That's probably a relatively low body-count scenario among the ways this could develop if they're left to their own devices.
If some kind of confrontation between a group of armed locals and the out-state militias develops there could be a real bloodbath.
I think unconditional capitulation with these militias is probably the only way to handle things that has a
chance of not producing any corpses, but I don't think it's a guarantee.
I suppose I should say we don't
know that assorted law enforcement is doing nothing about this. They could be preparing some kind of fast and hard strike on all points kind of semi-military action and not talking about it much. Or, since these assholes think they're heroes and keep doing interviews about how they're boldly standing up against tyranny by engaging in armed robbery, it could just be that the FBI is hoping they'll all wander off in a month or two, and can then be scooped up individually.
But fuck. In every case of police brutality we hear a bunch of bullshit justifications about how criminals are dangerous and organized and violent and so police forces need to be militarized and strike with maximum force and minimum warning to provide the criminals minimal opportunity to retaliate.
And so we see these militarized forces deployed, full of men conditioned to regard everyone they encounter on the job as an enemy combatant and lethal threat, and they go raid people for having illegal poker games or growing pot or living in the same apartment building as someone who grows pot.
And, unsurprisingly, people get dead. Psyched up, heavily armed troops conditioned to regard the situation as lethal and respond lethally, and of course people are going to die that didn't have to.
And here it is for real. Here are real, live armed and organized criminals loudly declaring their intent to respond violently to any kind of law enforcement. These are the guys who can't be diffused non-violently. Bullshit like this is the only possible justification for police departments to have APCs. These are the kinds of dangerous men a militarized police for is
for. Where the fuck is it?