re: Breaking: Confiscating Legal Weapons at Bundy Ranch in Nevada

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Bundy's dispute with the government began about 1993 when the bureau changed grazing rules for the 600,000-acre Gold Butte area to protect an endangered desert tortoise, KLAS reported. Bundy refused to abide by the changes and stopped paying his grazing fees to the federal bureau, which he contends is infringing on state rights. His family has been ranching since the 1800s, before the U.S. Department of Interior was created and endangered species became a federal issue, he said in an interview with KLAS. "My forefathers have been up and down the Virgin Valley ever since 1877. All these rights I claim have been created through pre-emptive rights and beneficial use of the forage and the water. I have been here longer. My rights are before the BLM even existed," Bundy told the station.

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So they WERE paying grazing fees. That is evidence that is is NOT their property.

It doesn't matter when the Dept in Interior was created, what matters is when the federal government was created and when Nevada entered the Union. If his family was granted the land under Spanish rule, they should have filed their claim when Nevada was admitted, and then paid their taxes every year - just like my ancestors did. But by paying the grazing fees for as long as they did, they are admitting that they are only tenants on the land. Maybe he should get together with other tenants in the area - or the State of Nevada - and make an offer to the feds to buy the land outright.

Suppose I owned a house that I rented out. Now suppose that after a while I decide that it's too much trouble to manage the property myself, so I hire a management firm. That doesn't convery ownership the the management firm. Now suppose I want to tear down the house to build commercial property to increase my returns. So I tell the manager to inform the tenant that they will have to move at the end of their term. If the renter tells the manager to FO because he was renting that property long before the manager ever showed up, I would call the sheriff to evict the tenant.

If in fact this is STATE land we're talking about, the BLM has no authority. If it is federal land, the BLM was created to manage the land. I really have no idea how this is in any way about states' rights. It's my understanding that the federal government acquired the Nevada territory through war with Mexico. Therefore the expense for the land was borne by the federal government and gives them the ownership. From there, they can grant it or lease it as law allows.

Hell, Mexico has a better claim to the federal lands there than the state Nevada.