by Thursday marked the 33rd anniversary of the beginning of the siege of the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge (Idaho). As most readers know, Randy Weaver had been charged with a violation of the National Firearms Act for selling shotguns with less than the mandated minimum length.
This leads to the headline question of whether there would have been a Ruby Ridge if there had been no NFA.
Yes and no.
Without the NFA and its prohibition on untaxed shortened shotguns, the original charges against Weaver would not have existed and the US Marshals Service would have had no reason to attempt to apprehend Weaver for missing his court date. That said, given the many attempts to entrap Weaver so he would be forced to be an informant against Aryan Nation and other white supremacists in Idaho, the Feds would have found something.
I don’t want to go into much about the history of these groups nor of the role of Federal law enforcement in their investigation and prosecution. Suffice it to say, agencies like the FBI and the BATFE were actively investigating these groups in Idaho, used undercover agents, and sought to entrap those who could provide more information on them. Randy Weaver was one such an individual and eventually was arrested for a violation of the NFA for selling two shotguns to an undercover agent who had befriended him in an attempt to gain information. In the later Federal trial after the siege, Weaver was acquitted of all charges except for the failure to appear for his court date. A later wrongful death lawsuit ended with an out of court settlement to the remaining Weaver family members for $3.1 million. This was for the deaths of Vicki and Sammy Weaver.
With this as background and without trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist, getting rid of the most onerous parts of the NFA will not stop the Deep State. That said, I think both the lawsuits against the NFA have legs. The latter of the two, Brown v. ATF, brought by a coalition of the NRA, Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, and the American Suppressor Association, appears to me to be the one with the most chance of success as it covers both the tax issue and the historical issues of gun control. We shall see.