33 years ago, the FBI and ATF began an eleven-day chain of events at Ruby Ridge that showed just how far the government was willing to go to crush ordinary people who lived outside its control.

In August 1992, a failed federal arrest attempt at Ruby Ridge triggered an eleven-day standoff with Randy Weaver, a rural Midwesterner of Scots-Irish frontier descent who had moved his family to Idaho to live apart from government authority. A missed court date and a botched approach by federal agents led to deadly escalation, leaving Weaver’s wife Vicki, his son Sammy, and a U.S. marshal dead. The federal rules of engagement were later condemned, and Ruby Ridge became a lasting symbol of government overreach and the deep mistrust it fueled across the country.