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May 04, 2020 11:30 AM UTC

Getting Worse: "Reopen Colorado" Militant Arrested With Bombs

  • 21 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Bradley Bunn, one of life’s winners.

As the Denver Post’s Bruce Finley reports:

A 53-year-old Loveland man who boasted he’d bring high-powered weapons to a protest at the Colorado Capitol against coronavirus restrictions was arrested over the weekend and faces charges after Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agents raided his home and found four pipe bombs, authorities said Sunday night.

A criminal complaint alleges that Bradley Bunn, a member of an anti-government militia, possessed illegal destructive devices. Law enforcement officers including FBI agents, equipped with two search warrants, conducted the raids on Friday.

Bunn raised concerns after he boasted on social media that he would bring high-powered weapons to a rally at the Colorado Capitol protesting coronavirus restrictions. [Pols emphasis]

ABC News’ Clayton Sandell has additional details about Bradley Bunn, an apparent gun rights activist based in Loveland who reportedly helped plot an abortive illegal armed protest set for last Friday that never materialized under heavy police presence outside the Colorado state capitol building:

FBI and ATF agents served search warrants Friday morning at the Loveland, Colorado, home of Bradley Bunn, 53. Agents discovered four pipe bombs and potential pipe bomb components inside the house, according to a press release from the office of U.S. Attorney for Colorado Jason Dunn.

It is not clear what, if anything, Bunn planned to do with the pipe bombs, the official said.

Bunn came to the attention of law enforcement after using social media to encourage people to bring assault rifles to a planned May 1 rally at the Colorado capitol building, ABC News has learned.

Denver7’s Blair Miller:

In a motion to restrict some documents in the case, U.S. Attorney for Colorado Jason Dunn wrote that at the time the search warrant was executed Friday “there were concerns that Mr. Bunn was escalating to violence and that he had the means to commit violence.”

He also wrote that on Saturday night, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued an alert saying it had identified threats of violence toward FBI agents and local law enforcement coming from a “white supremacist extremist instant messaging group” that was claiming a “quick reaction force” was staging in Fort Collins in response to the Friday raid.

Dunn wrote that the group was “inciting followers to shoot through their doors at FBI agents and local law enforcement officers performing said raids.”

We’re watching for updates to this story in relation to Bunn’s gun rights activism before the COVID-19 pandemic, and possible connections to hard-right Republican usual suspects (figuratively speaking, for now anyway) at the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO). But after reading the plan posted online by an alleged associate of Bunn for “freedom fighters” to show up at the Colorado state capitol building “hot, locked, and ready to rock” last Friday, we can’t claim to be surprised by any of this.

But it may be time to put a name on what’s happening in the “Reopen America” movement.

These are terrorists. This is terrorism.

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21 thoughts on “Getting Worse: “Reopen Colorado” Militant Arrested With Bombs”

  2. Are you actually equating the Reopen America movement with terrorism? Are you really so evil?

    I can't believe my eyes. You are the real traitors if you think so.

    1. Are you actually saying that a man who brought 4 pipe bombs to a public building and said "F___ yeah" when asked if he intended to use them against police is not a terrorist?

      What if he had been Muslim, or Mexican? Would that make him more of a terrorist than an average 53 year old white guy with guns who listens to conspiracy theories?

    3. Storming a state capital building with AR-15s is an act of terrorism.  You can call Reopen America  by their real name:  Vanilla ISIS

      Terrorism

      noun

      the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

    5. …looking at you Nutlid. 

      I will not die of stupid 

      Someday, I’m going to die.

      This, I grudgingly accept. I have no idea how it’s going to happen. Maybe I will die of having a tree fall on me, of eating tainted shellfish, or of being struck by lightning. But this much I guarantee. I will not die of having wagered my life that TV carnival barkers, political halfwits and MAGA-hat-wearing geniuses know more than experts with R.N.s, M.D.s, and Ph.D.s after their names.

      In other words, I will not die of stupid.

       

    7. You can’t believe your eyes? How do you think we feel: reading about a domestic terrorist and finding our resident yet-as-of-late mysteriously-absent troll defending said terrorist?

    9. Yes, we are moddy, you fucking asshat.  Because people like this are involved and behind it.  You are a fucking traitor by wanting to reopen and ensure the deaths of many of your fellow citizens.  The state's police power allows the steps that have been taken.  It is neither unconstitutional, nor anticonstitutional.  But taking up arms against the state, yeah, that's fucking treason defined.  

    10. Uh, this guy is a part of the movement, like it or not.  And real traitors attack our institutions – which this guy was planning on doing.  He's the true traitor here. 

      1. Actually, Dave, a 155 mm howitzer is a bit heavy for either open carry or concealed carry.  But your state militia can stock them at will.

    2. No, but the Supreme Court did a deep dive on definitions in the 2008 Heller case. Scalia wrote the majority opinion, finding

      “Arms.” The 18th-century meaning is no different from the meaning today. The 1773 edition of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary defined “arms” as “weapons of offence, or armour of defence.” 1 Dictionary of the English Language 107 (4th ed.) (hereinafter Johnson). Timothy Cunningham’s important 1771 legal dictionary defined “arms” as “any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.” 1 A New and Complete Law Dictionary (1771); see also N. Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) (reprinted 1989) (hereinafter Webster) (similar).

      The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity. For instance, Cunningham’s legal dictionary gave as an example of usage: “Servants and labourers shall use bows and arrows on Sundays, &c. and not bear other arms.” See also, e.g., An Act for the trial of Negroes, 1797 Del. Laws ch. XLIII, §6, p. 104, in 1 First Laws of the State of Delaware 102, 104 (J. Cushing ed. 1981 (pt. 1)); see generally State v. Duke, 42Tex. 455, 458 (1874) (citing decisions of state courts construing “arms”). Although one founding-era thesaurus limited “arms” (as opposed to “weapons”) to “instruments of offence generally made use of in war,” even that source stated that all firearms constituted “arms.” 1 J. Trusler, The Distinction Between Words Esteemed Synonymous in the English Language37 (1794) (emphasis added).

      Nothing throughout the opinion hinted it was okay to have explosive devices.

      And ATF makes it clear:

      Persons who manufacture explosives for their personal, non-business use (e.g., making fireworks to set off on your own property or mixing binary explosive components to remove a stump in your own yard) are not required to have a manufacturer’s license. However, no person may ship, transport, cause to be transported, or receive explosive materials unless such person holds a license or permit.

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