Border Wars

So the sound of gunfire kept getting closer, and Joan said to me, “Do you think they’ll stop before they reach the house?”


“It’s hard to say,” I replied.

You see, my property borders the Bitterroot National Forest, and it’s near an area where lots of folks like to recreate. There’s relatively easy access from the highway and plenty of camping spaces. Trail riders, ATV riders, campers, rock climbers, hunters and fishermen all like to come up here. It’s a big forest, but this particular part gets its fair share of use.

Every once in a while, somebody will have a little bit to drink, and break out their guns. It’s more likely to happen on a holiday weekend (Fourth of July is a busy time), but it seems that trees are in season year round.

Now I’ve never understood the pleasure that a man gets from stumbling around the forest in a drunken stupor, pumping the pines full of lead. But it’s a popular activity among some.

Occasionally, these fearless lumber hunters will wander close enough to my house that I get concerned for my safety. I’ve never had a bullet strike the house, or even come close, as far as I can tell. But it’s hard to ignore the approaching thunder.

On this particular Saturday afternoon, the guns were getting too close for comfort. I told Joan, “I’ve got to go out there and let them know that there are people over here.”

“You can’t go outside,” she said. “You could get killed.”

But I could get killed sitting inside the house, too. When I peeked out the window, I saw that they’d crossed over onto my property. That was too much.

I grabbed my .30-30 Winchester, stepped out onto the porch and fired a shot into the air to get their attention. It worked because they stopped and looked at me like I had 4 heads and 2 of them looked like Nancy Pelosi. I think it was the first time they noticed that there was a house a few yards away.

I explained that they’d walked onto private property, and seeing as how I wasn’t in the mood to take a stray bullet from a drunken idiot, I asked them to kindly remove themselves from the premises. They apologized and staggered back into the National Forest, winging a Douglas fir on the way out.

When I went back inside, Joan said, “That was foolish…and excessive. But it was effective.”

That got me to thinking.

What’s the proper response for removing armed invaders from your land? If you’re the United States government, the answer is to ignore them.

There’s a section of this country where law enforcement agencies can no longer protect the lives of American citizens. Even though the land is owned by the taxpayers, it’s closed to the public because the government can’t provide for the common defense of its people there.

The Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge consists of 118,000 acres of land in southern Arizona. Approximately 3,500 acres of the refuge located along the Mexican border have been closed to public use since 2006 due to safety concerns.

The notice posted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on their website states, “The international border with Mexico has also become increasingly violent. Assaults on law enforcement officers and violence against migrants have escalated. Violence on the Refuge associated with smugglers and border bandits has been well documented.”

In a recent statement they said, “At this time there are no plans to reopen this southernmost ¾-mile wide portion of the Refuge.” They went on to say, “The Refuge will reopen the area at such time that it is determined to be safe for visitors.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service has tried to downplay the significance of this by noting that the area is only 3% of the total refuge. That may be true, but it’s still part of the United States, and it’s under the control of coyotes and drug smugglers.

Rather than make the area unsafe for the criminals entering from Mexico, we have chosen instead to say that it’s unsafe for Americans. As far as I can tell, armed foreigners have invaded a small portion of our country and driven our citizens out. Our law enforcement agencies have been unable to regain control of the region for the past 4 years, and our federal government is doing nothing about the problem.

Are we going to quietly give up control of little pieces of our country? Are we going to let them creep north bit by bit?

If so, when they reach my doorstep here in Montana, they’re going to be greeted by my .30-30.

I don’t know, I guess I think too hard about these things.

Copyright 2010