Bundy’s brigade
Showdown on the range draws armed supporters
las vegas » To self-described militia members sleeping in windwhipped tents, drinking camp coffee and patrolling rocky hillsides with military-style weapons, protecting Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his family froman overreaching federal government is a patriotic duty.
“There are people out here who will sacrifice their lives and their fortunes and their sacred honor to defend them,” said Jerry DeLemus, a camouflaged former U.S. Marine sergeant from New Hampshire who called himself the leader of a Bundy security force of about 40 people.
“If someone points a gun at me,” he said, “I’ll definitely point my gun back.”
The armed campers are still guarding Bundy’s melon farm and cattle ranch a week after a tense standoff between gun-carrying states’ rights advocates and federal Bureau of Land Management police over a roundup of Bundy cattle from
The Associated Press public rangeland.
The BLM backed off, citing safety concerns. Theywere faced with military-styleAR-15 andAK-47weapons trained on them froma picket line of citizen soldiers on an Interstate 15 overpass, with dozens ofwomen and children in the possible crossfire.
BLMpolice released the 380 cattle collected, gave up the week-long roundup and lifted a closure of a vast range half the size of Delaware. The agency said itwould resolve the matter “administratively and judicially.”
Left unresolved was the government’s claim that Bundy owes more than $1.1 million in fees and penalties for letting about 900 cows trespass for 20 years on arid rangeland of scrub brush, mesquite, cheat grass and yucca near the rustic town of Bunkerville, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Bundy backers claimed victory. “We won the battle of Bunkerville,” said retiree BevalynMarshall, 53, who heads home at night to nearby Scenic, Ariz., but returns by day with her shotgun and her Vietnam veteran husband to amakeshift stage lined with fluttering flags.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., called Bundy’s supporters “domestic terrorists” and said a federal task force was being formed to deal with the unrest. Sen. DeanHeller, R-Nev., told a KSNV-TV interviewer on Friday: “What Sen. Reid may call domestic terrorists, I call patriots.”
Bundy, the 67-year-old patriarch of aMormon family with more than 50 grandchildren, seems to enjoy the attention. He met the media last week flanked by personal guards.
Not everyone supports Bundy’s resistance. Andy Robinson, a pub and pizzeria owner in the nearby resort town ofMesquite, said he didn’t like bloggers and radio talk show hosts comparing the standoff with deadly federal confrontations at a religious compound inTexas in 1993 and a farm house in Idaho in 1992.
“Being compared to Waco and Ruby Ridge doesn’t help anything,” Robinson said.