Malheur shows American gun loons can be bored into submission

[struggle4progress]

BEN MACINTYRE
THE TIMES
JANUARY 30, 2016 12:00AM

... Waco changed America for ever and offered a salutary lesson in the deployment of a weapon far more effective in defying armed rebels than guns and teargas: namely, boredom.

A similar stand-off in Oregon this month .. had all the hallmarks of another Waco ... But instead of trying to force the anti-government group out of its lair, federal officers have successfully bored most of them out of it, and then caught them ...

Two decades ago, the Feds would have gone in with all guns blazing. Instead, they opted for the tactics of extreme tedium, by surrounding the building, cutting off electricity, and waiting. There was no loud music or teargas. “Less is better,” said one veteran FBI hostage negotiator. “Sooner or later, the wives are going to get sick of the sight of their husbands screwing around out there, or they’ll need to go get cigarettes” ...

The effectiveness of that approach is best represented by John Joe Gray, the man behind the longest and least-noticed standoff in US history. In 1999, Gray bit a policeman during a routine traffic stop; he barricaded himself into his 19ha property south of Dallas with a large arsenal and his six children, and predicted apocalypse. The fugitive dared the authorities to come and get him. They never bothered to. After 15 years charges were dropped, although no one told Gray, who remains barricaded behind his barbed-wire stockade. Just another bored, right-wing loonybird.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/malheur-shows-american-gun-loons-can-be-bored-into-submission/news-story/8b79dc79e6fd88382f0263ad171ad09e

[phantom power]

1. It didn't end when they "got bored," it ended when the FBI arrested them.

[struggle4progress]

2. Many wandered in and out before finally drifting away.

The group that was arrested Tuesday was driving 90 or 100 miles to John Day. And after those arrests, several more voluntarily surrendered to authorities, instead of staying longer in the refuge

[Blue_Tires]

4. Well it was clear that they lost a lot of their juice

when they realized there wasn't going to be some firefight against the National Guard and romantic martyrdom for them... Even the media was getting bored hearing the same old angry yokel philosophy, and the story was getting downgraded to local/state news

[vinny9698]

3. The Soviets did a similar thing during WW2, they trapped a whole German army

on a penisula. The Soviets just sealed them off and let them stay their until the war was over. Where the Germans surrendered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courland_Pocket