Analysts study links between Bunkerville standoff, extremists and Las Vegas cop killers

No one knows exactly what triggered Jerad and Amanda Miller’s weekend shooting rampage that left two Las Vegas police officers, a Wal-Mart shopper and themselves dead. But the couple acted out anti-government leanings in a horrific way in the aftermath of what is perceived as a victory within right wing extremist circles — the April 12 armed showdown in Bunkerville that forced the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to stop removing rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle from federal land. “I think you could say the Millers, doing what they did, came in an environment that was emboldened because of the success in Bunkerville,” said Ryan Lenz, a senior writer for the anti-racist Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama. “They were staring down the barrel of a gun, and they got the federal government to suspend the rule of law. The next thing you know you have a young couple in Las Vegas shooting law enforcement officers and putting on their dead bodies symbols of the patriot movement and saying ‘this is a revolution.’” Militia groups, sovereign citizens and tax protesters, who all share anti-government beliefs, make up the patriot movement across the U.S. Lenz, who was in Bunkerville as a Poverty Law Center observer, said the standoff has become “without a doubt” a major moment in the history of the anti-government extremist movement. “There were hundreds of heavily armed patriots who decided they were going to stand against the federal government,” he said. “They were ready to fire if need be.” The FBI has since launched a criminal investigation into threats made against federal and local law enforcement officers during the standoff. Mark Pitcavage, a top Anti-Defamation League researcher, said he doesn’t consider what happened in Bunkerville a total victory for the anti-government extremists. Not long after the standoff racist remarks made by Bundy became public, tarnishing his position. Until then, a broad range of supporters had rallied to his cause, including mainstream conservative politicians and a Fox News television anchor. And a San Antonio man said to have ties to the sovereign citizens movement tried to help Bundy in court, but a federal judge ordered him to stop filing frivolous court papers. Sovereign citizens have declared themselves above the government’s jurisdiction and not obligated to pay taxes. Occasionally, they commit acts of violence, but they are better known for clogging the courts with nonsensical documents. Lenz and Pitcavage agree Bundy’s front-line supporters were drawn from the loose-knit patriot movement...more