blog 2, old joke about electric something

This all started with allegations that a legitimate firearms company run through the Mount Carmel Center was making illegal machine guns and explosives. They were previously investigated by local police over a noise complaint when the neighbors reported machinegun fire. The investigation concluded that the guns were semi automatic and they were just shooting really fast.

The explosives allegations came from a delivery where a box broke open and the delivery guy saw demilled grenades and jars of gunpowder. Demilled grenades have the fuses and explosive payload removed and a big hole is cut in the bottom of the shell. It looks like a grenade but it’s little more than a paperweight. The amount of effort it would take to make a de-milled grenade useable again is incredibly pointless when you could make a pipe bomb instead. The Davidians hit up a lot of gun shows as many gun businesses do. Dummy grenades are a hot seller at gun shows. The gunpowder was used to make ammo that was also sold at these gun shows.

I wouldn’t expect the delivery boy to understand all of that but to the ATF you have this cult with heavy firepower and they still had a black eye from how they handled Ruby Ridge. Certainly if they did the same thing twice this time their militarized presence would take down the super dangerous bad guy right?

When the ATF put their focus on the Davidians Koresh openly invited them in to look at their guns and manufacturing equipment. They refused. They planted an informant and spied on them to build a case.

When it came time to get a search warrant they told the judge about the noise complaint but deliberately omitted that the police investigated it already. They also told the judge about allegations of child sexual abuse. That had also been investigated by the local cops and turned up nothing but the ATF didn’t mention that part. The narrative was that we have to hit them NOW to save those poor children.

So they got their warrant and rather than a few guys rolling up and knocking on the door to serve it they make a mock-up of the compound to practice kicking in the doors like a special forces operation.

Koresh got word about the raid and told the informant to call it off and they’ll cooperate. The informant ran off and left them. When the ATF rolled up one of the first things they did was shoot the dogs at the compound. The Davidians hear the gunshots and assume they’re being shot at so they shoot back killing 4 agents. That led to the month and a half standoff before the feds burned the place to the ground.