An Examination of Resistance

All right, so welcome everybody to an examination of resistance with Ammon Bundy. We're here in Manchester, New Hampshire, and we are going to be exploring the idea of resistance and what it means to be an American in 2026 and whether the Constitution has failed us. So welcome, Ammon. Thank you for coming.

Thanks for having me.

The first question that I have for you, you're a man with a reputation.

The first question I have for you is why do you do everything you do?

Well, I guess what is it that I do? I do take care of my family. I provide for them. I'm a father. I'm a husband. and I believe in Jesus Christ and so that's first what I do now obviously over the last decade or so I've spent several years in prison I've been arrested many many times I've stood up for different families mostly in the a ranching or land use community and that's cost a heavy price but ultimately I grew up in an environment where I was very free I grew up on a ranch outside of town in in that environment in the middle of the Mojave Desert southern Nevada and I was very free and so this idea that I had to get permission from other men to live was something that I just never even had a concept of until I saw what they tried to do to my father's ranch.

I thought maybe it was just a little isolated thing that was going on in the BLM, but the BLM out west is not the anti-government radical group that most people think it is.

The Bureau of Land Management. Yeah, it's the Bureau of Land Management. For those of you who don't know.

I think everybody here probably knows.

It's still an anti-freedom organization.

It's just the government. Yeah.

So anyway, I thought maybe there was just a small problem inside one agency, federal agency. And then we saw basically a federal army come after my family. And it was hard to process, like, what's going on

here?

And I'm kind of analytic, so I broke it down afterwards and started realizing that we have a major, major problem and that the future of our future and the future of our children's living free without having to get permission from other people to do everything they want to do or should be able to do, that is at risk.

And so it really motivates me.

were you and your family distrustful of the government and and federal authorities before they started coming after the the land that your family ranched on

well i mean it never happens all of a sudden uh so yeah my dad you know my my father took

it over and he got it from my grandfather

father and there was some troubles with the federal government coming in and overreaching but what most people here in the east don't understand is Nevada

is 89% federally controlled

89% of our land is controlled by the federal

claimed by the federal government and and

and even more of the subsurface mineral rights are claimed by the federal government so I mean out here here it's all private property. But out there, in order to actually even use the land or the resources, the federal government says that you're supposed to get permission from them. Well, but it's completely unconstitutional. The founders did not establish a nation where a centralized government is supposed to control the land and resources. And that's the argument that we've made for multiple generations. And it came to a head where they were like, well, we're gonna take it anyway.

And my dad said, no, you're not.

Hell no, he said.

And they said, well, we're gonna take it by force.

And he says, hell no, you're not gonna take it. And that's just where it ended up.

So I've heard you

say before, like in the past,

that had you not had a community,

your family wouldn't have been able to do what they did in Bunkerville and stand up for themselves. How do you build a community like that? What was the community able to do that your family couldn't do by themselves?

Well, when they first came in 2014 at my family, which, again, was a 20-year legal battle that came to a head, basically. But they just said, well, we're the, you know, we've got the biggest stick, so we're going to do what we want to do.

and it was and then they

began they locked down the ranch and what I'm talking about it's a large ranch we're not talking about 180 acres because out west thousands of it's thousands of acres now we don't we don't claim that we own the real estate and I know it's hard for people in the east to understand that but out west because it's so arid there's a multiple use basically was developed the rights were developed through multiple use. We own the grazing rights, the forage. And we deeded them with the state of Nevada. We own the livestock watering rights. These are deeded vested property

that we can go to a bank and actually borrow money on.

It's real property, but it's the forage.

Correct, it's not the actual land. You don't own the land.

Same with the water rights. You can own water rights in the West, but you don't own the land. You own access to the water to use the water. We also have a lot of land where people have actually camping, hunting rights, where the public, general public, it's much different because they weren't able to go and make a living off 160 acres like the homesteading acts allowed out here in the east. So it developed different. And we can get into that if we want to through prior appropriation, beneficial use. But the point that I'm making is that it

was very clear that it wasn't constitutional.

It wasn't right. And so my dad basically just stood on that right and said, you're not taking it. But back to your question, it was just

our family, you know, at first. And they came.

They came with an army. There was 213 armed federal agents that came in. They brought in four helicopters, M ramps. I mean, they built a military base and they locked down the ranch and we didn't really

know what to do.

Then I was still in Arizona at the time. And then my, they were, they began with the helicopter shooting the cattle from the air and they were burying in mass graves, killing the baby cattle. Just, it was just a massacre.

Slate

side note, but what is like, you know, one head of cattle worth and how many were

they slaughtering?

Well, now, yeah, I mean, it was different then, but if you look at the value now, because I guess that's where we can compare it to, if you're looking for a

cow-calf pair, it's anywhere from $18 to $2600. hundred dollars uh so yeah significant

plus plus the loss of not being able to have a calf every year after that sure so i mean you're you're getting into the you know ten thousand dollar range per cow that was killed right right you know um and they were just shooting them like they meant nothing to to them from the air anyway my brother was trying to film this standing on the

the side of a highway and they came and surrounded him and attacked him and beat him

up and drug him off and that's what my dad finally just says look I think it's time to get together like I don't know what else to do so we all all the boys and I've got you know I've got there's four I'm one of 14 so there was a whole bunch of us we got together and we were just trying to do the best we can of like expose what was going on and then on that Wednesday they started on a Saturday so they've been going with the operation for quite a few days and

on that Wednesday we saw them with

a whole bunch of trucks and equipment and they were coming out of the mountains and they had a big dump truck in a backhoe and i kept like i was like i'm gonna go find out what's in that backhoe and so i went down there i was on a four-wheeler and i couldn't see what was in the backhoe so then as that and they were it was being heavily guarded it had 14 vehicles and they were protecting this dump truck in this backhoe so whatever they were doing with that was

important to them and i was determined

that I was going to find out what was in the back of that dump truck. So as they came, as the dump truck came on the road, I drove my four-wheeler in front of it and just put it in park, shut it off, pulled the key out. And the dump truck tried to push it out of the way, but didn't succeed. And then there ended up being kind of just a big confrontation. That's where they tased me multiple times. They sick dogs on my sister who was pregnant. They body slammed my aunt Margaret to the ground.

I think I saw a video from that day when they tased you. You didn't even go to the ground.

You got two tasers and didn't even go to the ground.

They tased me three times. I guess, you know, I mean, I want to give credit to God. But ultimately, my adrenaline was flowing so high that, I mean, I was ripping the tasers out, you know.

Yeah.

And when it was all said and done, I reached up and I had one dangle into my neck and I pulled it out later. But anyway, I climbed up on the back of that. a dump truck and saw what they were doing and they were up there in our in the mountains tearing out all the water infrastructure and some of that water infrastructure is over 100 years old I mean there's parts of the concrete up there that

have my great great grandfather's

handprints in them and they're just tearing them out and the reason they were doing that is because they knew we had deeded rights in the state of Nevada to those waters and that those water rights also were called they're called livestock watering rights that they gave us grazing rights to the land and they needed to get rid of them so anyway i'm going a long story because once that happened the body slamming of my aunt margaret to the ground you could still watch it today you just search bundy ranch you know and then me being tased well it was it was when facebook it wasn't Facebook live it was right before Facebook live but where you could take a video and then upload it and that was filmed and uploaded in and after that I mean thousands of people started coming to the ranch and it changed everything it was no longer just my family trying to resist um it was

now hundreds and then thousands of people that came and I will say this kind of to emphasize the

to emphasize how serious it was,

we were told that if we resist, by a Bureau of Land Management agent, that if we resisted in any way, that this may be another Ruby Ridge or Waco.

So that's how serious it was. That's an explicit threat. Yeah, that was absolutely,

they were trying to make it clear that this could very well end with your lives.

So obviously at Bunkerville, you guys won and that was a big

win but ultimately that was a

defensive win and there's all these other ranchers that lost their lands in the same area what does like what does real victory look like

well after this

all happened and it it was we were reactive like we just we're just doing the best we could hundreds and then thousands of people came and we ultimately give them an ultimatum to leave and they did leave

fact it was amazing because the people gave him an ultimatum to leave within an hour and they left within an hour and I've got pictures of the lines of truck because they had over 107 trucks that they left in and so uh but um now it was like what what happened what like it was

just processing it and i began to analyze and then also what what preserves rights like our rights and after quite a bit of time and breaking it down and talking to a lot of people and analyzing what went on. I believe that the way that you protect rights is through, you have to claim it, you have to use it, and then you have to defend it.

You have to claim that

it's yours, you have to use it, and you have to defend it.

And

the reason why the ranchers, all those ranchers,

it was just in the Mojave Desert area, there

There was over 53 ranchers that used to ranch in that area. And my dad's the last one. And why is he the one that only has his rights left? And the reason is because he made a serious open claim that these were his, that they belonged to him, that they came through him, through rightful path, through his family.

And then he used it.

He never stopped using it. He never lost the right of use. And then he defended it. And somewhere along the way, the other ranchers didn't do that. They either said, well, maybe it is federal land. Maybe the Constitution somehow does allow it. And they lost their claim to it. Or when the threats came, they removed their cattle from the land. When they were given notice or when they were threatened,

threatened they actually stopped using it and then they would not do whatever it takes to defend it

and so that's kind of the only one that really matters when it comes down to it because even i mean your dad did both of the first two

and he still had to defend it yeah well that's what i'm

saying it requires all three because if you're not going to claim it then you've already lost it sure and if you're not going to use the and you have you you lose the right then you've already already lost it. And I, just to explain, these are natural laws. These are not like something that I made up or that are the law made up. These are natural laws. And I'll give you an example. If you're standing in line and you're waiting for whatever, ice cream, and there's a line, there's let's say 30 people in line. Well, you're there and how is a line established?

first come, first serve, right? First and right, first and right, that's prior appropriation, that's the law, right? And each one has first and right, second right, third, all the way down to 30, right? So that's the right and that's the claim. But if you leave, now you might be able to

leave

for a little while, if you leave and stop using it, like you might be able to leave for just a little, hey, I'm gonna go to the bathroom real quick

and everybody around you.

you. But if you leave and the longer you leave, the less right you have to be in that line. And let's say you leave for 30 minutes and you want to come back. You want the same

spot in line. No, you've lost that

right. And then let's say someone comes along and butts in front of you. Well, now you just you just lost your position in line and you either

say, well, I don't

You could get the other people in the line and say, hey, we're gonna remove this guy, he's a lot bigger than me, but if we do it together, we could get him out of line and we could reestablish the order that we had. These are natural laws. Who tells people how to line up? No, and they do it in China, they do it in Africa,

they do it here, they do it all over the world

because it is a natural law that we understand about being first in line, about how rights are established,

and how about rights are kept. So the most

critical point is when somebody comes to take your rights from you, you have to be able to defend them, whether it's in line or it's ranching or grazing rights.

I don't think that the spirit of resistance is alive and well in America today. and I'm wondering if you have any insight like do you know why resistance is an unpopular position or stance

in America

well I mean I don't know if I

could define exactly why it's too risky

well there's part of that you know like Jeff Jefferson said that those who are when when the government fears the

the

people there's liberty and when the people fear the government there's tyranny i think that

certainly is applicable um but you

know why are we why are we so afraid uh and the answer has to be is because we have allowed and it may not necessarily have been completely in our generation

but we have allowed a system to

become so powerful that they have a complete monopoly on power They have a complete monopoly on force. And it was never designed in this country for that to happen. There was always supposed to be bodies of people that were, as the founder said, well-regulated and armed

so that they can counter the monopoly on power.

And we have allowed that to completely be dispelled. And so now there's a monopoly on power. There's a monopoly on force. it's in the hands of somebody other than the people and so and then that force is so so prevailing that it becomes very risky

to oppose it

I've heard you say

before that you you can't and a lot of people says you can't vote yourself freedom at the polls no amount of voting is gonna make you free

or maybe you

could a little bit here in New Hampshire we happen to have a lot of really great

people running for office. But

if democracy is failing freedom and the courts won't defend it, you know, a lot of times people lose their rights in court as well. Where do we go from here?

Well, there is a, in my opinion,

there's a misunderstanding of what the courts are supposed to do and also what the voting process is supposed to do. And it was never, ever to impact our individual liberty. And the fact that we believe that somehow we could vote

harder and we're going to be more free is just, it's

actually a ridiculous idea. And the founders never believed that. Voting was only supposed to put representatives in place in a system of governance that they were responsible for what the authority the people gave them to handle. It was never so that someone could go in and do whatever they wanted to do. And our courts were only supposed to answer disputes between basically two parties. It was never supposed to rule and change the form of government. And our founders were very clear about that. that they understood that there had to be a body of people, that people had to be able to, again, counter the balance, counter the force, or nothing would work.

And that's just where we're at. If we don't understand that, then liberty will be completely lost. There's that and then just the dumbing down of people. I mean I ran for governor in in Idaho and I mean I spent two years pretty

much

on the road having town halls and I had over 213 town halls and they would last pretty much around three hours long so I had a lot of conversations with people and during that time I would ask at the beginning of it what freedom was and And there was a very small amount of people that could actually give me a definition of freedom. They didn't know what freedom was.

They couldn't define it.

And these are people, these are the, you know, people that are coming to my town halls who are thinking, you know, freedom.

They're wanting to be free.

They're feeling it.

It means it's important to them, but they don't know how to define it.

And I mean, the founders were very clear that freedom is the ability to do whatever you want, as long as you don't infringe upon another person's right. And that's the that's the foundation. Like we should be free to do whatever we want, as long as we do not harm another person.

Sure. Yeah. Like property property rights are paramount, including yourself and contracts extended to this. You can have a contract with somebody else. You can contract ownership of land or management of land or resources, et cetera. But all of it just comes down to property rights.

It does.

You know, when you break it down, it's basically ownership of something, yourself or other material. But we also have the right to travel. And what does that mean? The freedom of travel? To be able to travel wherever you want as long as you don't infringe upon another person's right. to trade with each other, to be able to trade whatever you want, as long as there's a willing buyer and willing seller. And why do we have to have someone in between trying to

extract money out of that transaction? No,

the government's supposed to protect that transaction, not make money off of it.

This brings me to one of my questions I have here, which is,

is taxation theft?

Yeah, absolutely, it's theft.

Okay, let me rephrase this. is taxation theft and should we shoot the

feds? Shoot the IRS.

Is taxation theft and should we shoot the IRS?

If they come to our doors, does taxation qualify for resistance? Well, yeah.

Anytime you take somebody's money, it's theft through coercion, right?

Through force. It's theft.

I mean, how else would you define it? And so, yeah, it's theft. And income tax, as many may know in this room, maybe they don't, but it's not constitutional. There is no such thing as an income tax authorized in the Constitution.

It was a voluntary tax when they started it.

Yeah, so then you get into, well, how do you pay for government? Well, how did the founders pay for government? How did the original form of government pay for its services in the first of the year?

Well, I challenge all of us to look into that because it's a lot different than what we've been told.

Income tax was, what was it, 1913, right around there is when it was formed. It was either the 16th or 17th Amendment.

I get them mixed up.

One was about the Senate and the other one was about

the Reserve.

Yeah, so, because there was two of them passed the same day, same time. Income tax is a fairly new thing, actually, when you relatively look at it. And it is theft. There's other better ways to fund government. And the other thing you see, as soon as they pass an income tax, and now the federal government was able to actually extract money from the people, before they had to get it from the states.

As soon as they did that, the growth of government,

when you look at the growth of government,

especially the federal government,

you've got it going about like this.

And as soon as income taxes just goes up. Oh, yeah.

And it becomes this massive thing. And so the answer, if you're trying to minimize the size of government, is to take away its funding. And anyway, so yeah. Now, if you're supposed to shoot, shoot them when they come, I'm not going to answer that question.

That's fair. I think that's fair.

You know in your heart what you're supposed to do when the IRS shows up.

I have a lot of fun with this, man. Yeah.

Okay.

So you've obviously had some experience with federal agents. There's even people who are watching may or may not know there was a whole imposter production company that came to your house and interviewed your family and and you guys like fed them and hung out with them and you know were gracious hosts my understanding um here's my question

how do you spot a fed well

so yeah that the fbi put together a full production team called

longbow

production and they came and said they want to do a documentary on my family and the whole whole Bundy Rant situation and they were I mean they seemed very professional and they were you know and I think about it now like oh like I wouldn't say evil but wicked is a person you know to come into my my mother's like feeding them she's just being kind to them and she's

doing all these things right and they're plotting to put possibly her but her all her sons and her

her husband in prison for the rest of their life. And I mean, anyway, that's, that's interesting in itself. But the way that we ultimately, well, we didn't do very good at spotting them.

We found out,

you know, later. And we just told the truth

so that there was nothing wrong with what we did in

the sense, even in the, in the sense of the law. So ultimately it ended up being something that

that didn't hurt us.

But we didn't know who they were.

We had some questions.

But the one thing that now I look for is I look at the cameras and I look at the setup because they had hundreds of thousands of dollars

of brand new equipment and brand new vehicles

and everything was new and nice and everything was new. I mean, every camera. And so now I look at it and I go,

we should have seen that.

We should have seen that they, like even if you bought a new camera, it's not, if they are a production team,

they're not gonna just, all the cameras be brand new. You know?

And so that's one way.

They got lots of money and they were willing to

spend that money to try to capture our family.

Well now they're gonna watch this

and they're all gonna go get used cameras.

and that's not going to be useful anymore. They're always watching.

They're always watching.

Okay, so what about this one?

Similar, a little bit similar.

You have been in armed standoffs with federal agents where they're calling you up and saying, hey, let's talk. How do you negotiate with federal

agents?

Well, I may not be the one to ask because I never negotiated very much with them. But, you know, I've had hundreds of federal guns pointed at me, threatening to kill me.

I've seen them shoot a good

friend of mine in the back with his hands in the air.

LaVoy Vinicum? Yes, LaVoy, and killed him right there, right there.

You know, then they arrested us and drug us off to prison for two years, and we were never convicted of even a misdemeanor,

not even an infraction so we spent two years

in federal prison was never uh never convicted of a crime went through two major trials uh was acquitted on all charges and the minimum charges the minimum sentencing would have been 106 years for us so they were trying to put us away for the rest of our life so anyway what was

the question again i got oh how do you negotiate with oh yeah you just don't i mean I mean, you know, I did, especially at Malheur, I would go up to their compound. I mean, they had a 400, the FBI had a 400 man,

armed man, basically, and they were fully equipped, again, with, they built a military base. They took over the local airport there. And I would go up to them. I mean, I was going, there's video out there.

I was going up to them, to the gates where the guards were and saying, hey, I want to talk to whoever's in charge here.

I want to talk to them because they were trying to build a force that looked like we were so dangerous that they had to have 400 men, right? That's what they were doing. And so I was combating that by actually going up and saying, let's talk. They would never come out and talk. They would never come out because they didn't want, they didn't want to look like we were just normal, normal, everyday people standing for something that really meant, that was important to us, and standing for families that have been abused by these people for, you know, several decades.

They just didn't want it to look that way. So it was a big show to get people, you know, to

think that something was dangerous when it wasn't.

Sure. Do you think that,

that do

you think that liberty or freedom is something that we can actually have for the

whole country?

Or is this limited to small enclaves of people who are willing to defend themselves?

Well, I can't remember which one said that the Constitution was only capable of governing a wholesome, moral people.

That's a really rough paraphrase of it.

But you can't have a constitutional form of government with an immoral people, meaning people that have no problem hurting other people.

Sure. And so the only way to do

that is to do it by force. but what we have is we have we're the immoral people and i believe there's a difference between evil and wicked right and and without you know going too much into that i mean we do have evil people that are in government but i think most of the people in government are wicked

and many of us are wicked i do wicked things so often i i call myself wicked right so i i'm not

perfect i don't want to be wicked right that's the difference an evil person wants to hurt somebody else. A wicked person makes mistakes and does things that he shouldn't do and may

be in

the process of trying to correct and become a better person. We have a government clear full of those people, right? But we also have evil

people in government. And the only way to combat

or to stay free when evil people are in power is those evil people have to believe that they're they're personally threatened. Because they do not change their direction.

Sure.

They will not change their direction, they're evil. And so we cannot lose our power to be able to defend ourselves. We have to be able to defend ourselves and truly threaten evil. Otherwise, there is no chance of liberty. There is no chance of liberty if you do not have the power strong enough to threaten evil.

Sure.

And that's what the government was supposed to do. It was supposed to be that power. But when you have the people that would harm others in the government

for power or money or for whatever

it might be for a wicked theology or evil theology, when you have that, you have to be able to defend yourself.

So liberty will depend on if the people are able to maintain, keep and maintain a strong enough balance of power to defend themselves.

And that's just where it is. And so at the ranch is a perfect example because my dad and my family, we're pretty like limited on what we could do. We're going up against the federal government.

We're pretty limited.

But when you got a thousand people that show up,

all of a sudden now, the whole thing turned.

Now they became the ones that were afraid. They were the ones that hunkering down in their military base, afraid of what the people might do. And it completely flipped everything. It made me think completely different. And it doesn't take tens of thousands of people. It really only takes a hundred, maybe a hundred.

A few hundred at a time, maybe.

My dad said that if I could get 10 ranchers to stand with me, we could turn this whole thing around.

That was at the beginning, he said that? Yeah, at the beginning. And he's right.

Because, I mean, just this body of people here, if you would just stand in solidarity and be strong and say, look, you're not going to take away our right to trade. You're not going to take our right to travel. You're not going to take away our right to worship. You're not going to take our right to own and control private property without permission. You're not going to take those and you would stand on that. It wouldn't take very many of us to be free.

Sure.

I do wonder is it seems like you have people that came together around you and that is is a blessing, but is it sustainable?

I guess the question is, is resistance like a movement that could become an institution or is it a series of emergencies that we have to rise up and be ready for?

Yeah, that's a good question.

Because we saw like COVID where all these groups formed and then once the threat was gone and then it kind of dispelled and and a lot of the unity was was lost if you will yeah but again talking in experience so what happened at the the Bundy ranch you know

happened and ultimately

the cattle that they took we went back in and put them back on the ranch that the ones that weren't killed there was about 400 of them they had in krails put them back on the ranch and my My dad went back to ranching. Now, now what happens, because in the West, again, you've got the federal government claiming all this land, so they claim that they own the real estate, unconstitutional, but they claim they own it, right? So that's one layer of claim. And then they put like national monuments on it. So then there's another layer of claim. Then they put like areas of critical environmental

control

on it, then they put wilderness area on it,

Then they say it's a back country byway.

And they get all these layers saying that they're claiming it and that man

can't use it. There's new tortoises here.

Yeah, tortoise, yeah, desert tortoise, you know, habitat area.

All of these are layers that they put on my dad's ranch, right?

And here my dad is saying, nope, it's my ranch,

right?

And so my dad will be in his old Ford tractor.

tractor, and he might be plowing

a water line through the desert, because that's how we water and keep the desert alive, right? Water the cattle and all the other animals. He might be doing that, and he might be going through what the BLM, federal government, would claim is their land, Bureau of Land Management land, national forest, wilderness area, area of environmental critical control, desert tortoise habitat area, all these things,

right? Right there. There he's plowing a pipeline

in it to to build another water trough. Yep. Right. And here comes the federal ranger. Right. Because he's out there enforcing the federal

law. Right.

He'll come and my dad will go and they'll pass each other and they don't even look at each other. They just completely ignore each other. And and why can he do that? because that ranger knows that if they give Clive

and Buddy a hassle, that it'll be not just a

thousand people that come this time, it'll be 10,000 or maybe a hundred thousand. And that's

what keeps him free. That's what keeps him free. That's why he can do and live free,

just like his father and grandfather and great-grandfather.

And that's what we have to do as a people in order to be free. Yeah, I think we can all

agree that that is the best outcome and what's necessary. I don't know that everybody can do that. There's so many battles to be fought, and it seems

like so few people care. I don't know that it's sustainable. You know, you guys went to Malheur after.

there if there had been three or four or five more incidents like that you know I know when you first went out to Malheur even some of the militia groups were like we're not going yeah you know I'm not convinced that I'm not convinced that every time somebody's rights are threatened there will be that much support

so how do we how do we deal with that well I

so I think again using real life experience because at at Malheur we we learned a lot

lessons because it it

wasn't until the militias began to falter that the feds felt they had the power to basically use force

and that's when lavoy was killed while the they while they were there and we're talking about you know 40 days

while they were there um the the fbi and the feds didn't dare. They didn't dare. But this is what happened. And this is the difficulty. Rather, the militias came into Burns and rather than like joining us out there, they were afraid to join us, if you will. So they tried to stay in town. They tried to get hotel rooms or eat at restaurants

and they run out of money. They flat

run out of resources. And so they all had to go home And they all had to. So there was no support system for when the militia came to keep the militia there in active duty, if you will, all the time. So we understood this. And then during COVID, we built what we call the People's Rights Network, which right now has about 70,000 members in it, just under 70,000 members. anyway and that system is basically a network but it was also designed so that if like if there was a need for a militia if you will or groups of people to go and be activated that there was a

body of people there that could continue to support them that's

great right and it's all on a voluntary basis but that way if a man leaves to go actually help his neighbor and he's there actively and let's say a militia or whatever he's there and he has needs and and that have to be taking home care home well that network would do that yeah that's great the other thing the People's Rights Network did was it was a communications network so that they could call on their neighbors fast and we saw that like in Oregon what was all over but one example in Oregon was a

a restaurant owner who was being told he had to shut down. Well, state police came to shut him

down. He activates the People's Rights Network, which is a communications network, and there was

over 100 people show up at his restaurant.

And they basically kindly told the state police to leave. And the state police left and never came back. And this happened. I mean, I'm just giving you one example. It's happened over and over again through the People's Rights Network, which is why they had to attack it and try to attack me because they believed that if they could take, you know, the head off that it would all collapse. But these are the type of things that we must do. We must build these systems to where people can be activated quickly and also so that when those people come, if it's a long-term thing, they can be sustained.

Yeah.

Yeah, with the internet, it's probably even easier to set that up than maybe it used to be.

I mean, ours was a texting thing, email thing, ham radio. You know, we didn't get into smoke signals or anything like that.

Hopefully you never have to. That's a sign of a bad time if you're using smoke signals to communicate to your people.

So you've mentioned that you, I mean, clearly we have to have the group of people who share our values if we ever hope to sustain any amount of freedom. That means there has to be some sort of selection effect for who comes into a community. How do you square this with right to travel and some of your stances on immigration? Where there has to be a selection process. In New Hampshire, the Free State Party, we believe that basically selecting your people

so that you can have a culture that is yours

and people that share your values is paramount, and we try to actively select for them, how does that fit in with, you know, immigration and with borders?

Well, I don't, I believe the selection process has to be the people

that believe that in freedom, which is the ability to do whatever you want as long as you do not harm another person. So if you're going to create a selection process, you know, which I don't know if you have the power to do that,

the power to decide who you can live next to or not. I question that.

But if you are going to do that,

then you certainly want to select people

that actually believe in liberty, which is the ability to do whatever you want as long as you don't harm another person. So that has to include to be able to live and to travel wherever you want as long as you don't harm another person.

person. So the

only right that people have to use coercion, force on another person is when that person is infringing upon your right. That's

the only right that you have. Then

that's the only right government has. There is no moral right for a legislator to say, well you can use compulsive force upon another person when that person has not harmed another other individual like that's not that's just government saying we have power and we could use

it so i mean if you're going

to build a community based upon freedom and tell people they can come in and out you can only do it based upon your your right to defend yourself ultimately is what i'm saying sure so you know uh and i don't believe that i have to have permission or anybody else has to have permission to travel. I don't believe that I have to get another person's permission to

be able to travel from state

to state or around the world. I don't believe that. And anybody who does believe that then obviously believes that it's okay for another person to force another person to live in an area or to not live in an area. And I don't believe that.

So, would

you say that,

I mean, there's obviously homeowners associations and private property. I'm sure you believe that you own your land. If you want somebody to leave, they can go. You know, could a state have the right to say we only want people who believe in the First and Second Amendment to live here?

And if you don't like that, get out. That wouldn't be acceptable?

By what authority does that state have? I mean, where does that authority come from? Like, is it a collective authority?

Essentially, it would end up being some sort of a collective authority.

There is no such thing as collective authority.

If you believe in that, you believe all rights are collectively controlled by a mob. There is no such thing as collective rights.

There's only individual rights.

But if your rights cease to exist when you don't have a community that shares them because they will take them from you, you

have to have something like that. You have a right to defend yourself, right?

You have a right to defend yourself, but you do not. It is not a crime to live.

Sure.

So when somebody comes into this, into your community and wants to live peacefully and not harm anybody, even though they might not believe what you believe, they have a right

to do that. And you have no right to stop them. Sure.

Because what is the factor there?

It is harm.

And so if someone comes into your neighborhood and they start to they come and steal your stuff,

you have a right to, you know, to.

You have a right to use compulsion upon them

to defend yourself, besides that you have not.

And that's that's very clearly what I the principle that I've stood on.

So you don't you don't believe that a state or like a place, a community could have the right to restrict their, like, immigration into that area to people who share their values?

I mean, we have private property. You know, you do have a right to keep people off your private property. And if there's a group of people actually have private property, and they wanted to all come together and say, look, we want to restrict who lives

here, you know, yeah. Yeah, but that would be their right

within the private property rights within they have. But when you have other land that is not claimed by other people, and if that person wants to come in and buy that land and be a good community member, not harm others, but he may not be of the same race

or religion

or whatever it might be that, or even belief, then I do not believe that the other people around them have a right. Because if he goes and purchases that, and now he has a property right, now he has a right to be there.

Yeah. And I certainly agree with the property rights and you can't just go take somebody who's bought their house and say, nope, this isn't your house anymore. Maybe the more interesting question becomes, I don't know if we have time to get into it. We're getting up to audience question time, but maybe the more interesting question is how do you determine who shares your values enough to come into your community?

Well, again, it really doesn't matter. I mean, if a person is going to come in and he's going to be peaceful and not harm others, he has a right, he or she has a right to be there. And they have purchased property and they're, you know, providing for themselves. selves, that is the rule. That is the law. I don't believe that peaceful residence is a crime or a

sin. Sure. So

I'm going to give you one more question. This is a slightly different

question.

one of our our members here um he wanted me to ask you he sent me a story about uh the name

Ammon is a it's

in some Mormon religious stories is that

correct yeah it's in the book of Mormon

could you could it's in the bible too though could you share the

the story and and did that have any influence on how you felt about yourself growing up?

I don't think it really had any influence. Maybe. I mean, maybe, you know, you never, I never know how much, but I did get the name from my grandfather. His middle name was Ammon. And my middle name is Edward, which my grandfather on my mother's side, his name was Edward. So my names both came from my, my grandfathers. But Ammon was a, basically a missionary

that went to kind of

the enemies of the Nephites. They're called the Lamanites. And he went to them because he had been converted to the Lord.

He had had an experience where he was a pretty wicked person,

even probably evil. And he had an experience that changed his heart. And then he wanted to convert basically the enemies of his people.

so he went to them and uh very

interesting because the the first thing he did he was captured by them and then the king wanted to put him in prison but he kind of ended up talking to the king and the king ended up liking him and so he made him a servant and said Ammon was like well just let me be your servant so he was over these the flocks and the enemies of the king would come down and to try to steal the flocks and basically make a long story short he defended the flocks

and he

ended up killing several of the the enemies of the king he cut off a bunch of their arms and then the king thought king and his men thought somehow he must be this great power like this god

and he was very humble

about it but it basically opened the door for him to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the and convert and he converted the you know thousands of thousands of the Lamanites so that's kind of the story of the missionary

Ammon in the Book of Mormon yeah I don't see any resemblance at all I don't know

why Daniel would ask that no that's great okay so I think it's time for

audience questions is that right Jeremy

yes we're gonna do audience questions I didn't give the audience instructions so here's how it works you can ask a a question stand up ask your question sit back down afterwards no speechifying ask a short question all right but yeah we're just gonna go popcorn style who has a question for him and bondy there's always some yeah um the question i have is you've actually been in the situation where

you've got guns they've got guns somebody might start shooting and what i want to know is what What is your thought process for like, here's the line in the sand, this far and no farther? And when you have a thousand other people, how much do you discuss and articulate and decide and agree on that?

Well, I have to be honest with you because at

the Bundy Ranch, like

none of the arms that were there was organized, if you will, by my family. I mean, people came and were like, well, people have a right to bear arms, right?

So if they decide to do that, but what, what, but what did happen, which was amazing was

that it all ended up underneath that wash underneath those bridges. And you have the feds with all their weapons in arms and they're pointing their guns at

us.

And then you have basically the militias that were there and they're, they're there.

And, you know, they

say that we pointed the guns back at them, but the reality is it was just their presence there was strong enough because it made them accountable. All of a sudden now they can't just kill innocent people. Even though they, I mean, it's very interesting what you see in the discovery

because we got all that later because they tried to prosecute us, right?

Well, what you see is at the beginning when we're first there, because we were there, my family and a whole bunch of other people were there, and we're unarmed. And they're like, shoot the fat lady first. This is a shoot first, ask questions later situation. They're just basically talking about murdering us. We're talking about in their body cams and so forth. So then all of a sudden they start to notice, well, there's a rifle there.

There's a rifle there.

there's people up on the bridge and all of a sudden they're starting to say well hey if if very many more come we're going to be outgunned and then all of a sudden more come and they're like now all of a sudden like we can't win this and we they it was a very interesting thing to

watch and because all

of a sudden now they become personal personally accountable now their their Their life is at risk, even just the possibility. And that turned everything around. That made everything right. Now you've got people that were unaccountable, that were basically planning on murdering people. Now they become very accountable just simply because someone showed up with a gun.

I don't know. Hopefully that answers your question. I have a question kind of related to that. Why were they so afraid of horses?

I noticed in that documentary they're like, hey, if they bring horses, we can't stop horses.

I guess the Calvary, right? Yeah, what's up with that? That was surprising. You guys have Humvees.

Anyway, go ahead.

Sorry, next audience question.

So I can't imagine what kind of like everyday stress that would result in an experience like that. What is your everyday carry? If you don't mind sharing.

Yeah, I mean I have a little Sig

Sawyer 9mm that I carry, but

I mostly just take it to church. Partly because my church tells me I can't and the other The other part because There's been a lot of attacks on church churches. And so, you know, I just feel like a duty and responsibility to be able to possibly defend and, you know, my family and neighbors that are in the church community.

So that's a 9mm. I thought you was going to ask how you stay so chill. Oh, yeah. How you stay so mellow.

First, I want to say thank you so much for your families and your actions and your example that's set for the entire nation and probably the world, but we really appreciate it. So my question for you is in regards to we, from the outside looking in, consider your situation essentially a win for Liberty. But I want to know from you if you can list a few of the real world consequences and costs to your family that you've dealt with because of this. Well, it

completely changed my life.

It's never been the same.

I mean, I could honestly say that prior to 2014, my life was about as good and perfect as life

could be. I mean, I had a beautiful family.

I had a business that was thriving.

I had a really nice home and a beautiful wife.

It was really, really great. and then everything that happened at the Bundy Ranch

through that all and now

now everybody I knew was divided they were either for me or against me I mean these my community my own community my own church and it wasn't just me it was my wife and my children and my my whole family so that that was an immediate consequence it just immediately divided everybody but they had to make a choice right and so that was a huge consequence it ended up causing us to leave the Ilevar community in Arizona that's how I ended

up in Idaho and then I mean I

could go on and on you know we're talking about two years in federal prison spent a year of that in solitary confinement that was difficult never once was able to have any physical contact

with my family for two years I

watched my family just struggle because I mean I was a breadwinner and I wasn't alone my dad was in there my brothers was in there a whole bunch of other people Jerry DeLaymas who many of you probably know is from this area was in there and and they did all

they could do to cause us harm and suffering so that we would take a plea deal now

so those are real consequences yeah I mean many

many many things happen

during those prison times and I can tell you many stories now we just call it you know we went to university because we learned so so much in there. And then, you know, my business, I mean, there was a lot of financial consequences to that. I had a very, like I said, a very thriving business. I had a lot of several businesses. And so it costs, it costs me millions and millions of dollars to make this fight. And so, I mean, I could go on and on. Those are just a little, little, little bit of some of the the consequences but I I still find it like if I was to have to evaluate what I do it again I would do it again I could honestly say I would do it again

I would have to do it again and and I

probably will do it again to to the dismay of my life but I probably will I probably I have to and I could tell you a really quick story when when I so we'd been in prison for two years and when I wasn't in solitary confinement they usually had me in the maximum security because I was a really bad prisoner I just wasn't a good prisoner and I was in there and

without giving you a whole backstory basically it was a Sunday and we're in kind of the open area

and there's most people are watching TV and there's this young man he's probably about the distance of the back of this room and he's got one leg on the tape the chair or the the bench and he's right next to a table and he's watching TV and I'm behind him kind of looking at him the TV's right above me and I'm just pondering I've been pondering like was this worth it like I was pondering with

Was this worth it? Was it worth?

And would I do it again? Because, I mean, now it's two years. We still don't know what, you know, we're kind of winning. We're winning in the court.

But it's been a lot of suffering.

And solitary confinement, my family, I still haven't seen them. I got my brothers and my dads in there, all of us. Like, would we do it again?

in and and what I really ultimately

would I stand up for other people again at my own risk that's basically what I was asking and I'd been pondering that for several months and I didn't know the answer I didn't know if I would be willing or able to do

it again because I'm in this condition and right at this moment four

or five guys came and just started brutally beating this young man down I mean they were just and they knocked him out now he's on the ground and I almost instinctively jumped up and I ran and I pushed myself through those men that were beating this guy and I grabbed him and picked him up and it was like protecting him with my body and it kind of confused those that that were you know beating him and I was

able to predict because they were mainly

mainly kicking his head and I had his, I pulled his head up and they stopped. And then shortly after that, here comes the guards with all of their gear and, you

know, come in. And, but it

answered one question for me and that I would do it again, that I did do it again. And that it was like almost a natural thing for me to do. I didn't

think about it. And so that, that's just,

I've kind of accepted that I'm supposed to do that. And I know I'm not alone. We're supposed to defend the innocent

or at least the weak.

Because really none of us are innocent. But we are supposed to defend the weak. And we're supposed to be men and women that do all we can to go and defend the person that is hurt. Not to leave them alone. Not to let them be abused and hurt. And so that's what we're supposed to do. That was a long answer. Sorry about that.

No, it was a great story.

I believe that's it for audience questions, right?

Is that correct, Jeremy? All right.

Well, Ammon, I find you incredibly admirable. I think you're a very brave man and a good role model for people all over the country. And I really appreciate you coming out for this conversation. Thank you guys all for being here.

We're going to have another one next month. We have Charles Lehman coming out to talk about crime.

time. Should be a fun one. This has been an examination of resistance.

Thank you everybody

for coming and have a great night.