RUBY RIDGE

If you don’t know, or don’t remember, this is what happened at Ruby Ridge Idaho.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms first became aware of Weaver in July 1986 when he was introduced to an ATF informant at a meeting of the Aryan Nations.  Weaver had been invited by Frank Kumnick, who was the original target of the ATF investigation.  Over the next three years, Weaver and the informant met several times.   

In October 1989, the ATF claims that Weaver sold the informant two sawed-off shotguns, with the barrels shortened beyond the legal limit set by federal law.  Weaver denied this, claiming agents purchased legal shotguns from Weaver and later shortened the barrels themselves.  

In November 1989 Weaver accused the informant of being police; the informant's ATF handler ordered him to have no further contact with Weaver. 

In June 1990, ATF agents attempted to have Weaver act as an informant for their investigation into the Aryan Nations organization.  When Weaver refused, the ATF filed charges in June 1990 falsely accusing Weaver of being a bank robber with criminal convictions.
  

A federal grand jury later indicted him in December 1990 for making and possessing, but not for selling, illegal weapons in October 1989

Perhaps it was inevitable that the longest federal trial in Idaho history would be followed by the longest jury deliberation in such a trial–a 20-day marathon that had news people joking about whether the jury planned to put in for retirement benefits.  The eight-week trial of Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris grew out of such a bizarre set of circumstances that it’s not surprising it took a while for the jurors to sort things out.  It probably also took them a while to come to grips with the idea that government agencies could so blatantly engage in entrapment, lying, cover-ups, and the killing of innocent people.  As one alternate juror, excused before deliberations were completed, put it: "I felt like a little kid that finds out there is no Santa Claus"...