Another miner summons armed militia to protect his abuse of public lands

SAT AUG 15, 2015 AT 03:00 PM PDT
byHunter
.
If you are mining on public lands—and the government encourages that use like it encourages all the others—you are expected to abide by certain rules. You cannot construct permanent buildings on the site without permission. You cannot cut new roads through the wilderness without permission. You cannot block the public from using the area around your mine, because it's their property as much as yours. And you are not allowed to let other people store their explosives in the buildings you built illegally off the road you cut illegally, on public land, because c'mon..

If you do happen to illegally do all these things on federal, publicly owned land, when the authorities find out about it you have a few choices. You can bring yourself into compliance by not doing the bad things and perhaps paying fines or filling out paperwork that makes the less-bad things legal again. You can challenge the authorities, appealing either to the department in question or to the courts. Or you can send out an urgent call for America's most unstable gun-toting maniacs to trot yourself over to your place right quick and start pointing guns at any federal workers who might come near the place, because how dare they think you'll be following the rules.
.
In a press release issued Saturday, the Oath Keepers of Josephine County and the Idaho Three Percenters, another militia group, said they were recruited by Kornec and Nappo following "threats" to their mining venture. They referred to their activity at the White Hope Mine as "Operation Big Sky." [...]
.
It's unclear what the "threats" to Kornec's and Nappo's mining claim were. Court documents showed that the U.S. Forest Service sent a non-compliance notice to the pair in August 2014 that forbid any mining activity until the outstanding issues were resolved. The agency also ordered the unauthorized garage to be removed by June 30.
.
If this new Montana standoff sounds very familiar to a previous situation in which Oregon gold miners sent out the militia bat signal and the Oath Keepers of Josephine County flew to the (inexplicable) rescue, you're right. It's the exact same group. They're all about "defending" folks from the rigors of having to file the proper paperwork these days. They've trained their whole lives for this mission, the moment when some thickheaded anti-government crank builds an unauthorized garage on property that isn't his and they need to temporarily make his supposed right to do that their momentary raison d'être.
.
Here's a bill I'd like to see proposed: If you have ever in your life responded to routine government paperwork by summoning an armed anti-government militia to protect you from that paperwork, you are hereby barred from federal lands from then on. No three strikes or any similar nonsense. Refuse to pay your grazing fees, and when called on it you summon an armed militia to point guns at whatever federal workers got the assignment of moving your cows? Lose all future access to the land. Lease a tiny little hardrock mine in the middle of Forest Service land and, when federal workers remind you that you can't store explosives on the site without filing out the right forms, summon an armed militia to make sure anyone who tries to give you the court summons will have a really bad day? Yeah, that's going to go in the bad neighbor bin, and We The Public don't want to have to deal with your twitchy paranoid self from now on.
.
These seems a bit of a no-brainer, doesn't it? Protect your illegal use of federal land with armed guards like you're a third-tier warlord, pointing guns at federal workers and generally terrifying any other poor hiker that might get near—lose your land use privileges. Get the hell off our property, Twitchy Joe.
.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/15/1411793/-Another-miner-summons-armed-militia-to-protect-his-abuse-of-public-lands