“This is a revolution.” …The recent domestic terrorism attack in Las Vegas and its roots in the Cliven Bundy standoff

It’s being reported that Jerad and Amanda Miller, the couple who murdered two Las Vegas police officers as they ate lunch on Sunday, and then moved on to a nearby Wal-Mart to continue their killing spree, may have been involved in the mid-April anti-government standoff between federal authorities and armed militia members supporting racist Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. Regardless of whether or not they participated in that armed uprising against Bureau of Land Management agents, who had massed outside Bundy’s Bunkerville, Nevada ranch in order to roundup his cattle, which had been grazing illegally on federal land for the past 20 years, though, there’s no doubt that the two harbored deep anti-government beliefs.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok, who we spoke with not too long ago about the growing threat of the anti-government groups in Michigan, “Witnesses said that (the Millers) shouted ‘this is a revolution’ and draped the (murdered) officers with a Gadsden flag — a symbol of liberty used by both the anti-government ‘Patriot’ movement and many Tea Parties — before going on to kill themselves as police closed in.”

By way of background, here’s a clip from the Las Vegas Sun:

…In his last Facebook post before Sunday’s fatal shooting, Jerad Miller spoke of the “dawn of a new day.”

“May all of our coming sacrifices be worth it,” the June 7 post read.

Miller’s online presence over the last year includes dozens of Facebook posts and 20 YouTube videos posted under the username USATruePatriot.

The posts and videos depict Miller as a man frustrated with the government to the point where he considered violence.

“To stop this oppression, I fear, can only be accomplished with bloodshed,” Miller wrote in a lengthy rant posted on June 2.

One video posted on Oct. 15, 2012 shows Miller dressed up in full face make-up as the Joker, Batman’s comic book nemesis. The video, titled “joker for president” shows a costumed Miller ranting in front of an American flag.

“Year after year I’ve watched you Americans, my fellow citizens, vote for tyranny,” Miller said. His other online posts mention having visited the Bundy ranch during Cliven Bundy’s showdown with the federal government in April. They also touch on topics ranging from Benghazi to gun rights to the militia movement…

Here’s Miller’s last entry on Facebook.

While there’s not yet evidence placing Jerad or Amanda Miller in the area of Bundy’s ranch in April, along with all of the other militia members pointing their weapons at law enforcement officers, a photo has surfaced showing Jerad with former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, the leader of the radical “Patriot” group The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the two met at a February 8 campaign event for Libertarian candidates running in Clark County, Nevada. (See photo below.)

I mention this likely connection between the Millers and the anti-government crew that coalesced on the Bundy ranch not to suggest that the latter were in any way directly responsible for the murder of these three individuals in Las Vegas, but to ask the question, “Do those individuals who knowingly spread misinformation about our government share any culpability when things like this happen?” In other words, should those individuals who, for political reasons, purposefully spread misinformation about Benghazi, chemtrails, Obama’s secret Muslim agenda, and any number of other things, feel any sense of responsibility when something like this happens? I think they do. The folks who orchestrated events at the Bundy ranch may not have turned this couple into the killers that we saw on Sunday, but there’s no doubt that their paranoid fears were being stoked by Cliven Bundy and those individuals surrounding him. (Bundy, when you strip everything else away, is just a wealthy rancher who doesn’t want to pay the over $1 million he owes to American people for grazing his cattle on federal land. Everything else… all the talk of federal tyranny… is just bullshit intended to whip up the anti-government masses who rushed in with their assault weapons to defend him.) Bundy and company may not have put the guns in the hands of Jerad and Amanda Miller, and pointed them toward a target, but they certainly played a role. And, in my opinion, they should be held accountable for that in some way.

And if you didn’t see this coming, you haven’t been paying attention.

update: After initial denials that the Millers were at The Bundy ranch, footage has surfaced which shows them there.

update: Cliven Bundy’s son Ammon Bundy just confirmed with The Associated Press that Jerad and Amanda Miller were among their supporters on site in April. According to Ammon, though, they were asked to leave due to their radical beliefs. Backpedaling ferociously, he said, “The only thing worse than tyranny is anarchy, and we certainly recognize that.”

So apparently it’s OK to point your guns at officers, just not to pull the trigger.

update: Well, that didn’t take long… It’s now being suggested that Sunday’s killers were FBI plants put in place to discredit the “Patriot” movement. The following clip comes from the Info Wars.

…Mother Jones, formerly edited by anti-Second Amendment zealot Michael Moore, writes in a screed implicating Infowars.com in the shooting that Miller suffered from “decaying teeth, lack of health insurance, and inability to find work,” in other words the supposed rightwing extremist likely did not have the funds available to buy a shotgun, handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Moreover, photos of Miller at the Bundy ranch show him toting an AK-47, the very weapon he pined for on his Facebook page. He is outfitted in crisp new camos and a bulletproof vest.

AK-47 semiautomatic rifles are priced between $450 and $3,500, depending on manufacture origin and modifications. The price of AK-47 ammo, the 7.62×39, while relatively inexpensive, routinely costs over $200 for a thousand rounds bought in bulk. A bulletproof vest can cost hundreds of dollars. The question is: how did an unemployed felon manage to buy this equipment?

TPM would have us believe a patron contacted on Facebook may have provided the funds necessary. While this may in fact be true, it does stretch credulity. In fact, this scenario is reminiscent of the behavior of the FBI agents during patsy frame-ups on terror charges.

Adding to the possibility that Miller was handled by the FBI is the fact he was ejected from the Bundy ranch. Ammon Bundy, the son of Cliven Bundy, said Jerad and Amanda Miller were told to leave the ranch. He said the couple were “very radical” and did not “align themselves” with the protest’s main issues.

This is classic agent provocateur behavior.