EDITORIAL

Lethal revolution

6/15/2014

Jerad and Amanda Miller, the young married couple who killed two police officers at a Nevada pizzeria and a customer at a nearby Walmart, were disturbed even by the standards of the militia movement. Cornered by police, they took their own lives rather than answer to a criminal justice system and state authority they considered illegitimate.

The Millers’ descent into homicidal anarchy was predictable, given the heat of their rhetoric. They said they hated the federal government, people of other races, and anyone else who disagreed with their interpretation of the world.

The Millers were early supporters of deadbeat Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy’s confrontation with the government last month over grazing fees. Even then, Jerad Miller was itching for a fight he believed would be apocalyptic.

It is a testament to how over the top Jerad Miller was that the Bundy family allegedly banished him and his wife because they were “too radical” for other armed anti-government protesters who were ready to battle local and federal law-enforcement officials.

The fringes of the American radical right are full of characters such as Jerad and Amanda Miller, two deeply cynical and ignorant gun fetishists who believed government exists only to enslave — and confiscate the guns and property of — every free American. They shouted to terrified Walmart shoppers that they were harbingers of a revolution.

They were flattering themselves. The only revolution they might foment is one by ordinary Americans who are determined to keep guns from other would-be cop-killers such as the Millers.