Automatic Firearm

Led by self-appointed Messiah David Koresh, the Branch Davidians were an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists and had been based at Mount Carmel since the 1950s. More recently, Texan newspapers had rumoured that Koresh was a polygamist and even a child-abuser; the BATF had become interested in him and his sect for firearms violations, including the converting of semi-automatics to full automatics and the manufacture of grenades. Since the Branch Davidians were legal dealers of weaponry (indeed, gun-dealing was one of the sect’s most significant money-making activities), the violations were relatively minor infractions. Koresh could easily have been arrested on one of his weekly visits to Waco, but the BATF chose instead to launch a full-scale raid on the sect’s compound. On the morning of Sunday 28 February 1993, BATF agents moseyed up to the compound, hiding in cattle trailers. Unfortunately, the element of surprise was lost thanks to a large black BATF helicopter circling overhead, not to mention the accidental discharge of a gun by a BATF agent which killed a fellow BATF besieger ...»