The Next Ruby Ridge? The EPA/BLM's Desert Tortoise Salvation Squad is Armed To The Teeth.

Got any ideas about saving your land from the US Federal Government and their Victim Class? Better have a bigger army than they do. It's not any wonder any more about the use to which all those bureaucrats will put their billions of rounds of ammo ordered in the past year or so. Those arms and ammo will be directed at citizens who run afoul of the designated Victimhood group. In this case, the designated Victim is the desert tortoise, which apparently lives on the cattle ranch run by Cliven Bundy in Nevada.

Bundy has been divested of his family's lease on 600,000 acres which he claims has been in his family for generations, well before the Feds moved in and claimed it. The Feds are now rounding up his cattle.

The Feds set up a small "First Amendment Area", where protests may be held, and nowhere else. The First Amendment is banished from even the state highways, as Bundy's relative found out when they stopped on a state highway and filmed the cattle in the distance being confiscated by the Feds.

Then 11 BLM vehicles with 22 BLM agents arrived and surrounded the malefactor. Four snipers on a hill trained their weapons on the videographer, and put a German Shepherd on him also. Then they ordered his father who was trying to reach his son, the videographer, off the phone, or he would be arrested.

"Vowing to take a stand for, “your liberty and freedom,” Bundy says he is prepared to be killed as authorities surround a 600,000 acre section of public land as a result of Bundy violating a 1993 Bureau of Land Management ruling which changed grazing rights in order to protect the endangered desert tortoise.

"'With all these rangers and all this force that is out here, they are only after one man right now. They are after Cliven Bundy. Whether they want to incarcerate me or whether they want to shoot me in the back, they are after me. But that is not all that is at stake here. Your liberty and freedom is at stake,' Bundy said.

"Bundy’s refusal to recognize federal authority over the land under dispute and his failure to pay tens of thousands of dollars in grazing fees stems from his assertion that his family’s history trumps bureaucracy.

“'My forefathers have been up and down the Virgin Valley ever since 1877. All these rights I claim have been created through pre-emptive rights and beneficial use of the forage and water. I have been here longer. My rights are before the BLM even existed,” Bundy said.

"Accusing feds of seizing Nevada’s sovereignty, Bundy says he has fought the battle legally, through the media, and is now gearing up to fight it physically.

“Armed agents are forming a a military-like staging area to prevent anyone from approaching the area,” writes Mike Paczesny.

Bundy asserts that his case is emblematic of how America has been transformed into a “police state,” labeling the government’s actions “pathetic”.

This will not end well, and could flare up more than the ham fisted Feds, expect... or do they? They seem very well armed, with every bureaucracy having its own army. Maybe they want the war to start on their schedule. Or maybe they're just tone deaf to the national sentiment, and just don't care. The Feds claimed that Bundy caused this via "threats [which] are made that could jeopardize the safety of the American people, the contractors and our personnel". I don't personally recall feeling threatened...

Mr Bundy has created a larger burden to the taxpayers through his statements,” said National Park Service spokeswoman Christie Vanover during a press conference call held Sunday afternoon. “He has said that he will ‘do whatever it takes’ and that his response to the impound will ‘have to be more physical’. When threats are made that could jeopardize the safety of the American people, the contractors and our personnel; we have the responsibility to provide law enforcement to account for their safety. The greater the threats, the more security that is needed to provide public safety and the greater the cost to the American taxpayer. We are hopeful that lawful protests don’t escalate to illegal activity.”

But Ryan Bundy insists that his brother’s behavior along the highway on Sunday afternoon was neither a protest nor had it escalated to illegal activity.

“He was doing nothing but standing there and filming the landscape,” Bundy said. “We were on the state highway, not even off of the right-of-way. Even if they want to call [the area that we were filming] federal land; which it’s not; we weren’t even on it. We were on the road.”

Bundy said that several of his family members had gone out in four different vehicles. They were parked along the north side of the road about 200 yards apart, he said. David Bundy had gotten out of his car to film the cattle grazing on the distant landscape below.

Suddenly a large number of BLM vehicles came down and surrounded the area, Ryan Bundy said.

“I counted, they had 11 vehicles all with at least two agents in each one, maybe more,” he said. “They also had four snipers on the hill above us all trained on us. We were doing nothing besides filming the area.”

None of the occupants in the four family vehicles were carrying any fire arms, Bundy said.

Over their vehicle loudspeakers, the BLM officers ordered the family to leave the area, Bundy said.

“They said that we had no first amendment rights except for up by the bridge where they had established an area for that,” Bundy said.

The BLM has established two fenced areas near the City of Mesquite, that they have designated as free speech areas for members of the public to express their opinions.

The family began to pull away from the roadside area in accordance with the order from the BLM officers. But Dave Bundy was out of his car at the time and didn’t immediately return to his vehicle, Ryan Bundy said.

“He was filming and talking on the phone, I don’t know to whom,” Ryan Bundy said. “It happened pretty fast. They came down on him hard and had a German Shepherd on him. And then they took him.”