I chose the Waco cult siege for my research topic out of curiosity. I had no idea of what it was, or what happened. First I went to Wikipedia to get a general idea of what it was. Waco was a cult in Texas that was suspected by the FBI to have illegal guns in its compound. The cult consisted of one big living quarter on about 10 acres. Waco’s living quarters had about 100 people living in it at once.

            When I knew the background I broadened my research to find out what the full story was. This great  primary source was very helpful in doing so. The FBI was interested in Waco because they had reason to believe they had a stock pile of fire arms and weapons of destruction inside there housing. The FBI had tried to get a deal with David Koresh, the cult leader, to get him to surrender peacefully. The FBI waited 51 days on David and when he kept breaking the deals they stormed the compound, on February 28^th 1993. I got this from here.

            The FBI drove tanks and armored vehicles in to the compound. They shouted from a loud speaker things like “This is not an assault, do not shoot, you are responsible for your own actions, come out now and you will not be harmed.” David instead prepared his people to fight, getting them there gas mask and supplies. The FBI called out what they where going to do before they approached and threw in tear gas and smoke grenades. Agents where in front of the compound, defending themselves when the cult members started to fire on them.I got from here

             

             When the cult members refused to leave the compound the FBI agents started to break down the walls of the house to give the agents a shot. The house all of a sudden started to burn and no fire trucks came to put out the fire the FBI was then scorn for the deaths and destruction that was done.source In many public opinions the Waco siege was poorly planned and drawn out. The FBI was right about there suspicions of the cult having many illegal weapons and it probably was a good thing that they acted upon them cause the cults stock pile had more than 200 weapons. In the finical records of the Koresh  he spent 199,715 dollars on ammunition and weapons just seventeen months before the destruction of the cult. The list consisted of -

-         19 SGW CAR-AR assault submachine guns (three fitted with silencers), nine other silencers

-        8 hand grenades and at least 31 other grenade parts and fragments, more than 20 pieces and fragments of rockets (apparently used to make rocket-propelled grenades) along with 1 sight for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

-         3 Israeli-made IMI Galil assault rifles

-        10 Ruger Mini-14 assault rifles (one with a mounted scope)

-        A barrel for a M60 machine gun
-     1 30 mm rocket shell

-         9 FAL assault rifles (three mounted on bipods)

-         At least 54 AK-47 or AKS assault rifles (some converted to fully automatic submachine guns)

-         11 .12-gauge shotguns (one with a sawed-off barrel)

-         Dozens of pistols

-         Dozens of barrels for M-16s, AR-15s and other weapons

-         Gas masks and one chemical warfare suit

-         Several Kevlar tactical vests and other body armor and eight Kevlar helmets.I got most of this information about the weapons from here.

The cult at Waco was defiantly stock piling weapons for something. I think the actions of the FBI definitely saved America from an attack from one of own citizens. The court ruled David Koresh as most likely a psychopath. The death penalty was sent to David Koresh and his family.  source

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