From Ruby Ridge to ICE: The Partisan Blind Spot on Government Violence

I hadn't thought about the infamous (on the Right, anyway) 1992 “Ruby Ridge” incident for some time before reading this January 23 tweet from filmmaker Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco): “What a shock! Right wing yahoos who obsessed over Ruby Ridge cheering on #ICE gestapo killing & mauling the innocent. (Like Free Speech Absolutists cool with prosecuting Sen. Kelly for truisms.)”

“Do you mean that the Ruby Ridge killings were justifiable?,” I asked him, to which he responded by asking which ICE actions I approve of and calling me a “Nazi” before blocking me.

I'm the opposite of an ICE defender, but that nonsensical, angry reply gave me pause. Maybe I needed to rethink what happened when the FBI and U.S. marshals engaged in an 11-day standoff with self-proclaimed white separatist Randy Weaver, his family, and a friend named Kevin Harris in an isolated cabin in an area known as Ruby Ridge in Boundary County, Idaho.

I do recall being disturbed (but not obsessed) back then after hearing news reports that U.S. marshals inside the Ruby Ridge property had shot and killed the Weavers’ family dog and teenage boy, and that an FBI sniper had killed Weaver’s wife as she was holding her baby. It’s also disturbing to think that many progressives might think that being concerned about these killings is so far out of bounds that it makes one a target for stupid, dehumanizing name-calling. The same people, pumped up over their own virtue as they rail against the MAGA “toxicity” on Twitter feel free to call anyone they may disagree with horrible, libelous labels like “Nazi,” “racist,” “fascist,” and “white supremacist” with no recognition of their own culpability.

At the time, Ruby Ridge became an instant right-wing cause célèbre, especially among the libertarian-leaning. For this group, it was a textbook case of federal authorities escalating a minor situation into a deadly one, an opinion that future investigations, trials, and court rulings would bear out. The disproportionality in the law enforcement response is exactly what the Left is currently up in arms against over the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

But it turns out that skepticism over the exercise of federal power is less based on principle than a posture invoked or abandoned depending on who the government is pointing its guns at. In the context of the law going against a gun-toting racist, much of the Left views Weaver's wife and son as little more than collateral damage in a justified use of force. There's no need to find out what actually happened because that might cause some unpleasant cognitive dissonance. It's much more comfortable to fill in the story with assumptions that align with preexisting biases than wrestle with the facts.

The Ruby Ridge affair began after ATF agents lured a broke Randy Weaver into selling them a sawed-off shotgun, hoping to  turn him into an informant against the Aryan Nation’s white supremacist group. Weaver rejected the plan, got released on bail, but missed his court appearance, partly due to an official notice listing the wrong date. After obtaining a bench warrant for his arrest, the U.S. Marshals Service—through a combination of bureaucratic escalation, legal technicalities, and institutional paranoia—treated Weaver as a dangerous fugitive. But even after assessing that a direct arrest attempt at his remote, armed cabin could turn deadly, they went ahead with the raid without sufficient preparation in a number of areas.

Although this decision followed months of negotiations and outreach attempts, law enforcement failed to consult negotiation experts in a thorough manner, or make timely surrender announcements. Instead, they opted for a rapid-response tactical approach flawed with poor communication between on-site teams and the behavioral scientists brought into the effort after the initial—predicted—violence had occurred.

The U.S. Marshals approached the Weaver cabin in plain clothes after arriving in unmarked vehicles. From the Weavers’ perspective, they saw armed strangers approaching their home, which caused alarm. When the strangers shot and killed their dog, the scenario unfolded predictably. An exchange of gunfire left both  Deputy Marshal William Degan and 14-year-old Sammy Weaver dead. The feds shot the teen in the back as he was retreating to the cabin.

A few hours after the initial gunfire, the FBI arrived. The next day, FBI leadership rewrote their snipers rules of engagement, suspending the long-standing requirement that agents use deadly force only in immediate self-defense. Under these new orders, their sharpshooters could shoot any armed adult male on the property without confirming a threat.

Subsequently, an FBI sniper fired two shots towards the Weaver cabin—the only two shots fired there, by anyone, on that day. The first bullet wounded Randy Weaver, and the second wounded Kevin Harris as he ran toward the cabin, and then it passed through the front door and killed Vicki Weaver. The baby daughter she was holding wasn’t hit. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would later declare the FBI’s altered rules unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, yet no FBI employee faced criminal accountability for the killings. Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris, the two men the FBI had issued an illegal “shoot upon sight” order for, were later acquitted of murdering U.S. Marshal William Degan, and Weaver was cleared on the gun charge.

The only thing Randy Weaver was convicted of was failing to appear in court, and that was after a court official sent him a letter stating his trial date was March 20, 1991—when it was actually scheduled for February 20. For this offense, the government took the lives of his wife, son, and dog. In August 1995, the DOJ quietly announced an out-of-court settlement totaling $3.1 million to resolve all claims by the Weaver family against the United States and its employees. The agency, of course, added that the settlement didn't constitute an admission of guilt.

Judging the government's exercise of power at gunpoint by tribe, not principle, produces a moral inconsistency that allows us to excuse the same killings we’d otherwise condemn. But tribal affiliations make it so difficult to defend the “wrong” people, no matter how much the government has wronged them. Most partisans lack the courage to speak out in these cases, lest they be labeled as sympathizers of the undesirables, and then cast out of the tribe.

But nobody railing against the ICE killings while maintaining that the Weavers had it coming to them, or even just looking the other way with a shrug, can claim to be morally superior to the ones they despise—all those “fascist” Trump voters who’ve been saying Renee Good and Alex Pretti brought on their own deaths.