THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 26, 1995 TAG: 9504260492
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAN VERTEFEUILLE AND MARGARET EDDS, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: ROANOKE LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
A Pulaski County militia member who goes on trial today in Roanoke federal court may offer a glimpse into the national paramilitary movement spotlighted by the Oklahoma City bombing.
William Stump II, a self-described constitutionalist who will defend himself in court, is one of five members of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club indicted last summer on 36 counts of violating federal firearms laws.
The club, founded after the April 1993 deaths of the Branch Dividians in Waco, Texas, is thought to have been the first such private militia formed in Virginia. According to a spokesman, its purpose was to fight for gun rights and to prepare for an assault by the federal government against citizens.
The club met only three times before charges were brought, stemming largely from the testimony of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms informer who infiltrated the group. Two members of the group pleaded guilty to firearms violations in February. Two other members are to be tried next week.
Stump said comments in the press about the Pulaski militia in the wake of last week's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City could prejudice the public.
``I guess it's going to be a crime now to talk about the Constitution and our forefathers,'' Stump said Monday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Wolthuis said he doesn't think finding an impartial jury will be a problem, despite the reported possible link between a Michigan militia and the Oklahoma bombing.
``What he's charged with is specific gun violations,'' Wolthuis said. ``I'm confident a jury can tell the difference.''
Stump is charged with conspiracy to violate federal firearms laws and with possession of unregistered silencers and silencers without serial numbers.
Stump maintains that the hunt club members focused on effecting political change. As a side activity, they target-practiced with illegal weapons; Stump said he didn't know the guns were unregistered.
The club president, James Roy Mullins, has pleaded guilty to charges against him and awaits sentencing. Agents found documents belonging to Mullins that advocated guerrilla warfare, theft of government weapons and assassination. Mullins acknowledged possession of the documents, but he said such tactics would have been used only if the government struck first.
Stump has refused the help of attorneys because he believes they're part of the corrupt system.
Like militia members around the country, Stump speaks of the 1993 ATF raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco as the catalyst for his activism in the Blue Ridge Hunt Club.
Two watchdog groups - Klanwatch and the Anti-Defamation League - say the Blue Ridge Hunt Club is the only militia they've identified in Virginia.
Stump told U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser at a recent pretrial hearing that he was pulled in to the club by its vice president, Raeford Nelson Thompson, who was an informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and wore a wire to the meetings.
``I was vulnerable to what he had to say because we all saw the killings at Waco and we're all terrified,'' Stump said.
He said he worries that the ATF could send someone into prison to kill him.
``Is it reasonable for me to fear this man? If he and officers in his organization can burn up 85 people and not be brought to trial?'' Stump said.
The U.S. government makes mistakes, Kiser said, and Waco ``was obviously one of those mistakes.''
Militias are often dismissed as extreme or radical. But an analyst at Political Research Associates notes that the movements ``reflect deep divisions and grievances in society that remain unresolved.''
Joining such groups, Chip Berlet wrote in a February essay published by the Massachusetts think-tank, is ``an act of desperation; grasping at straws to defend their economic and social status - in essence protecting hearth and home and their way of life against the furious winds of economic and social change.''
KEYWORDS: MILITIA ORGANIZATIONS VIRGINIA FIREARMS
ARREST TRIAL by CNB