Citizen Militias

Since September 11, 2001, public and political concerns have focused primarily on international terrorism and Al-Qaeda. It is surprising that domestic terrorism has been ignored, considering that it was an important social problem after the Oklahoma City bombing. Timothy McVeigh was a right-wing extremist, and when he murdered 168 people on April 19, 1995, the government focused their terrorism efforts on domestic extremism generally and the militia movement specifically. Although there was clear evidence of the establishment of the militia movement in the early 1990s, one can conclude that the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and the erroneous inference that McVeigh was a member of the militia movement, led to a public panic regarding this newly discovered group of domestic extremists.

The militia movement emerged in the 1990s, fueled by several significant policy issues and two tragic events. Key policy issues included federal legislation that limited gun rights. The two legislative initiatives of particular concern were waiting period legislation (the “Brady Bill”) and the semiautomatic assault weapons ban. Other salient political issues included the election of Bill Clinton as U.S. president, passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, enforcement of legislation to protect endangered species and the environment, and other statutes that limited individual property rights. Two events that were critical to the emergence and growth of the militia movement were the law enforcement-citizen standoffs at Ruby Ridge, involving Randy Weaver and his family in northern Idaho, and of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. These two events, both of which involved federal law enforcement agents attempting to enforce gun laws, numerous people killed, and evidence of attempted government “cover-ups” to hide mistakes, solidified anti-government concerns and provided the early leaders of the militia movement with convincing evidence in support of their concerns and rhetoric.