From: [j--rd--n] at [aero.org] (Larry M. Jordan)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: In defense of Lon Horiuchi
Date: 2 Mar 1995 23:14:21 GMT


Here's a followup article from Joseph Sobran, columnist.

Joseph Sobran
In defense of Lon Horiuchi

Washington, February 9

A few weeks ago I wrote a column about Lon Horiuchi (The education of
Lon Horiuchi), the FBI sharpshooter of whom I said I knew only that he 
had shot a mother in the head as she held her baby--and that he had done 
it for his government. I surmised that Mr. Horiuchi was a product of a 
public educational system that instills a code of mindless obedience to 
the state.

To my shock and mortification, this account has been challenged by friends
of Mr. Horiuchi--who are also estimable friends and acquaintances of mine.
In fairness I will cite the version of events and the description of Mr.
Horiuchi I've received from Jeffrey Rubin, whom I've known for a decade 
as a devout, honest and utterly reliable man.  He attests that my inferences
are "utterly, horribly false to Lon Horiuchi," who he says bears no
resemblance to "the secularized, government-worshipping zombie" I imagined.

AS YOU MAY RECALL, Lon Horiuchi was part of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team
that was assigned to capture Randy Weaver, the political dissident and
recluse who had holed up in a cabin in Idaho with his family, where they
were joined by a friend.  During the ensuing siege, a federal marshal and
Mr. Weaver's son were killed.  Then the FBI unit was sent in, Mrs. Weaver
was killed, and Mr. Weaver was finally arrested and tried, eventually
winning acquittal on the original charges that had incurred the siege
in the first place, though he was convicted on lesser counts.

Civil libertarians of the left and libertarians of the right still wonder
why Mr. Weaver should have been a target of federal government at all.
Be that as it may, Mr. Horiuchi came into this drama in the middle stages,
presumably believing the official story (later disproved in court) that
Mr. Weaver's group had started the gunfight in which the marshal was
killed.  His friends contend plausibly that he assumed he was dealing
with murderous fanatics.

Mr. Horiuchi insisted later that he had killed Mrs. Weaver by accident.
For what it's worth, the government's own investigation eventually cleared
him of intentionally shooting her.  It means more to me that people like
Jeffrey Rubin believe him.  Whatever the full truth may be, Mr. Horiuchi
and his family are paying for the affair; they face civil and criminal
lawsuits, social ostracism, and the public obloquy to which my column
has contributed its part.

I hate to think I may have compounded the suffering of a man who acted in
good faith and didn't mean to hurt the innocent.  In one respect, I know
I misjudged Mr. Horiuchi's character: He is anything but an unethical
servant of the state that employs him.

ACCORDING TO Jeff Rubin, Mr. Horiuchi is a devout Catholic (an adult
convert) and an ardent conservative.  He has deep reservations about the
federal government itself.  He and his wife consider abortion a horror
and hope he won't be assigned to protect abortion clinics.  They school
their children at home, because, as Mr. Rubin puts it, "their view of
the public school system is such that they would sooner put their kids
into the public sewer system."

In short, Mr. Horiuchi's view of the U.S. government, in some respects, is
strikingly like Randy Weaver's.  But he accepts the government, for all its
faults, as essentially legitimate.  And that point of difference led to a
horrible tragedy that has maimed both men's lives.

Here is ghastly evidence that curbing the power of the federal government
is more than an exercise in constitutional pedantry.  The power of the state
is ultimately the power to kill.  The reasons and conditions of that power
must be extremely sound and clear, and the restraints on it must be so
powerful as to daunt any offical who may be tempted to abuse it.  Those
who are assigned enforce it are entitled to assurance that they are acting
justly.

REPREHENSIBLY AS THE government has acted in the Weaver case, I shouldn't
have made Lon Horiuchi the eponym of its persecution.  His heart rending
story should stand as a lesson to anyone contemplating a career in federal
law enforcement in an age when the federal government knows no limits.

* * *