For several days now, a small group of armed men have occupied an office of the National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon, 300 miles from Portland. They are demanding the “return” of land from the federal government to the American people, and leniency for two ranchers convicted of arson on federal lands.
By chance or by design, the siege overlapped with President Obama’s announcement of a sweeping executive order to restrict the unlicensed sale of guns and enforce background checks for gun buyers—measures widely decried by gun ownership advocates on the right.
The Oregon protesters are led by the sons of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who in March and April 2014 precipitated an extended stand-off with federal agents over unpaid grazing fees on federally owned land. That episode drew the approval of prominent conservative pundits, which in turn encouraged scores of protesters to rally to Bundy’s defense, and identified his clan as martyrs and ideologues in the re-birth of America’s anti-government militia culture.
Shortly after the occupation of the wildlife center, Cliven’s son Ammon Bundy, the spokesman of the militia, set up a new Twitter account (now suspended). Identifying his group as #CitizensforConstitutionalFreedom, he began laying out his principles.
But these pronouncements aside, he’s given very little further detail on his aims, identifying no obvious exit strategy. And with his call for other militias to join the rising, Ammon Bundy may have initiated one of the thorniest domestic challenges of President Obama’s final year in office.
