Two national news events occurring last week resonate particularly here in Sweet Home.
We’re not sure how many local folks, if any, are directly impacted by the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in Harney County or President Obama’s executive order on gun control. But they both are of high local interest because they deal with issues we live with every day.
Both of these stir local sensitivities because they touch on an issue that is a big one for local residents: trust in Big Brother.
The Harney County situation is an emotionally charged sequence that began with the conviction of two local ranchers, father and son Dwight and Steven Hammond, on federal arson charges.
The basics of the case are that the BLM issued the Hammonds a rangeland grazing permit in 2004, which allowed the ranch’s cattle to graze on federal public land in addition to the private land owned by Hammond Ranches.
Prosecutors alleged in an indictment that the Hammonds set fire to the rangeland after complaining the BLM was taking too long to complete required environmental studies before conducting controlled burn operations.
A jury convicted the pair of starting the 2001 Hardie-Hammond Fire, which burned 139 acres of BLM land. Steven Hammond was also convicted of intentionally starting the 2006 Lower Bridge Creek Fire.
Witnesses at the trial testified that they had to abandon a hunting camp in 2001 due to one of the fires, after watching the Hammonds illegally shoot several deer.
Despite the five-year mandatory minimum for a federal arson conviction, Judge Michael Hogan sentenced the elder Hammond to three months behind bars and his son to a year and a day.
The ranchers served their original sentences, but prosecutors appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences that require them to serve four more years. Chief District Court Judge Ann Aiken sentenced the two to five years each, with credit for time they’d already served.
The Hammonds reported to a federal prison Monday, Jan. 4, two days after the wildlife refuge was invaded by a group led by Ammon Bundy, a son of rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights in Nevada.
Though the plight of the Hammonds, which drew cries of injustice from some, was the event that actually instigated the takeover, the real heart of this lies deeper.
It boils down to the question of whether the federal government should own nearly half the land in the West. Clearly, we lack the space here to answer that, because it’s a complicated issue and we’re probably not stating things our readers don’t already know at some level. But it’s worth thinking about.
As with most aspects of the human experience, there is no perfect solution to the question of who should control federal lands.
One of the reasons why Teddy Roosevelt (who founded the Malheur refuge in 1908) and other leaders established the vast national forests was to preserve natural resources from human greed and irresponsibility. One need to look no further than the Amazon rainforest to see what can happen when people show little or no consideration for anything other than their bottom line, their selfish interests. That is not responsible stewardship of the earth.
But at the same time, bureaucrats in large, inefficient, politicized agencies clearly don’t always do what’s best for either the property they manage or for the local residents, who suffer the consequences of policies concocted in Washington D.C. Visions of Robin Hood sneaking through the King’s Forest, furtively seeking game, come to mind. People suffer at thier hands too.
Hence, we have outrage and the calls for return of federal lands to local control.
Though the Bundy bunch’s tactics may not be the best, they have effectively shined a light for the general public on some real issues.
Our society, like most, tends to ignore the past as we make the same errors our forefathers have. There’s a reason why the founders of our nation were leery of a strong federal government: because they had personally lived, in some part, that Robin Hood scenario under totalitarian kings.
Again, not saying anything most readers don’t already know, but locally, the federal government – starting with judges – have been responsible for decisions that have crippled Sweet Home and other communities dependent on national forests in response to concerns over the viability of the spotted owl.
While the viability of that species may have been genuinely threatened, the science on which the massive shutdown of millions of acres of federal lands to harvest of the rapidly growing forests was, it increasingly appears – for lack of a better word – spotty.
The justice of the response to the legal challenges initiated by do-gooder environmentalists, whose actual understanding of forest ecology generally fell far short of those whose livelihood put them in the forests every day for decades, is questionable.
So it’s not surprising that local folks have some sympathy with the concerns of those involved in the Harney County episode. The realization that government is not always for the people, at least many who experience the outcomes it dictates, no longer comes as a shock to some.
Our federal government, particularly during the last century, has strengthened its control of state and local affairs. The results and benefits for citizens have been mixed.
This topic of control leads us to President Obama’s action to make gun sales easier to monitor, and keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and people with criminal records.
At least, that’s the justification he gave for requiring gun sellers at shows and on the internet to be licensed – under the penalty of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine – and closing a “loophole” that allows gun buyers to acquire items like machine guns without background checks through a “gun trust” (paywall), a legal entity originally created to allow gun owners to pass weapons to their family members.
The number of gun trust applications grew from fewer than 900 in 2000 to more than 90,000 in 2014, the White House said.
Obama’s order also would make gun dealers responsible for reporting guns that go missing and would spend $500 million to “engage” individuals with serious mental health issues in care.
Even most gun dealers and owners with intense distrust of the federal government will acknowledge that they don’t want firearms in the hands of those who aren’t responsible.
The catch, of course, is that same issue of trust that pervades the land control issues: Do we trust government leaders and faceless bureaucrats, most of whom have little interest in and even less grasp of the realities of our circumstances here in Sweet Home, Oregon, to make the right decisions regarding how we should live our lives?
Violence is evil. It is aberrant behavior. But despite the heated rhetoric and vividly emotional memories of the tragedies of Sandy Hook and Columbine, the problem is still not guns, and it is foolish to point the finger at the instrument. The problem is ultimately the people who pull the trigger.
President Obama and those seeking to tighten controls to keep guns out of the hands of the types of people who shoot up malls and schools and movie theaters is that it’s almost impossible to stop people who have it in for somebody.
While it may make sense to close loopholes in existing law, it’s telling that otherwise rational people perceive this as a strike against their constitutional rights.
The underlying issue in both Harney County and the gun control action is trust in our government.
There may be more minor questions regarding whether what happened to the Hammonds was truly just or more in line with the approach of the heartless Inspector Javert of “Les Miserables” infamy.
Likewise, Obama’s actions will likely be challenged in court, because, no matter how just his motives, he appears to be doing an end run around the Constitution in bypassing Congress, which has failed to pass legislation he wants.
Both the Bundy folks and Obama ultimately need to pursue their goals the right way: through the proper political process.
But the elephant in the room is this trust issue. We’re in an election year.
Those in power and candidates who want to be would do well to think about what kind of demonstrated character and integrity is necessary to convince the public to trust them in a nation in which lying promises, foolish and harmful mandates and outright injustice leave many sorely skeptical.