If the Utah delegation has their way, the next wannabe Bundy clan will have one less thing to worry about.
Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and his colleagues from Utah have introduced legislation to strip federal agencies of their authority to police federal land.
It would strip officials in the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of their authority to enforce laws regulating federal land. Rather, local and state authorities would be provided with a block grant to enforce the laws instead.
Speaking to Deseret News earlier this month, Chaffetz accused those federal officials of being “more Rambo and less Andy Griffith than I would like.”
As I'm sure you recall, it was the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that found itself on the other side of dozens of Bundy militiamen in Nevada. The BLM agents were merely there to enforce laws routinely broken by Cliven Bundy.
Likewise, the Bundy occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon was prompted by the prosecution and conviction of ranchers who faced charges for setting federal land on fire.
If federal agents really were "more Rambo and less Andy Griffith" as Congressman Chaffetz alleges, they would gunned down the Bundy clan in both instances and they would have been justified in doing so. Instead, federal authorities gave the Bundy clan a rope to hang themselves with and now nearly three dozen of them have been indicted on federal charges.
Local authorities are not equipped to handle these situations and, as we've seen in some cases, they may not necessarily be interested in enforcing the law. Grant County, Oregon Sheriff Glenn Palmer is under investigation by state authorities for his close association and cooperation with the Bundy squatters.