Does the Oregon standoff prove hypocrisy within the militia?

Everyone wants to get tough on crime until it affects them.

The militia occupation of the wildlife refuge near Burns Oregon has been going on now for 20 days. Oregon’s governor Kate Brown was pretty clear.

“The spectacle of lawlessness must end,” she said.

And the mayor of Burns had simple message for the militias: “Go home!”

Related: Oregon standoff pits birders against militia

Because the people of Burns see the militia circus as eclipsing the main issue, which is the jailing of two of their neighbors – Dwight Hammond and his son Steven. The Hammonds are ranchers who admitted they burned about 150 acres of government land to control insects, which is exactly what the government controls insects, except the Hammonds didn’t have permission.

Because nobody was injured, the judge sentenced them to only a few months in prison. But then prosecutor invoked a law passed in 1996 in the wake of the Oklahoma city bombing that mandates five years for destroying federal property. That five year sentence prompted peaceful demonstrations that were then hijacked by the militias.

But at Tuesday’s meeting in the gym, one woman was brave enough to stand up and point this out.

“The mandatory minimum sentencing was not invented for the Hammonds. It has been around for 20 years and it was Republicans who put them in place,” she said. And President Clinton who signed it into law

The Hammonds, she says, can’t expect special treatment.

“And it is very sad, but it is sad for everybody in America who has an unfair sentence.”

She was calling the militias hypocrites for being silent when mandatory sentences were putting away poor people in the cities and getting upset only when those same laws were finally enforced out on the range.