Word: davidians
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...pride in the N.R.A. now that its focus has shifted from sporting issues to a zealous defense of gun ownership. Like many N.R.A. members, he fears that the citizenry's right to bear arms has been sorely challenged by such incidents as the 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the 1992 standoff between Randy Weaver and federal agents at Ruby Ridge in Idaho. "There should be more investigation. The government needs to explain itself more fully," says Dunklee, a range instructor in Phoenix, Arizona. He has been an N.R.A. member since 1989, but only...
Still, there was also a willingness to try to heal thorns in the flesh. Arizona Senator John McCain proposed that the Senate Judiciary Committee hold hearings into the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, a shared emblem of pain among antigovernment zealots. That disaster, said McCain, "fanned the flames of distrust." Indeed, the general perception that the federal action was justified may come in for serious revisionism. In an article in the May issue of the religious journal First Things, Dean Kelley, a respected legal scholar, reviews the records of the siege and questions the need...
...House Speaker Newt Gingrich that Attorney General Janet Reno's nomination of Larry Potts as FBI deputy director "will further slow down the terrorist legislation and will mean even greater concern over civil liberties, which I don't think is inappropriate." Potts oversaw the 1993 siege at theBranch Davidian compound in Waco, Tx., and the disastrous 1992 shootout at the home of white separatist Randall Weaver in Idaho, for which he was censured last month. Gingrich said those incidents, which have become rallying cries amonganti-government paramilitaries, aggravate a "genuine fear" of the federal government among rural western Americans...
...vigil commemorating the second anniversary of the Waco blaze were strutting men bedecked in camouflage. They were members of the North Texas Constitutional Militia, a paramilitary group, and they brought with them a granite stone carved with the names of the victims who died when the Branch Davidian cult went up in flames on April 19, 1993, following a 51-day standoff with the Federal Government. An 11-year-old niece of polygamist cult leader David Koresh approached the memorial and traced the names of the 82 victims, murmuring, "My cousin . my cousin . my uncle . my cousin...
Waco still burns feverishly for the 50 or so remaining members of the Branch Davidian sect, their relatives and their far-right supporters who feel a passionate allegiance to a group they believe was unjustly ambushed by an oppressive government. Pam Hawkins, a Branch Davidian sympathizer and founder of the Mount Carmel Independent Investigation Advocates, said that her first reaction to the news of the Oklahoma bombing was that it might have been a "planned disruption" of the Waco commemoration. "I have learned," she said grimly, "not to give the government the benefit of the doubt...