A RARE VISIT WITH THE REBEL OF RUBY RIDGE

He is the patron saint of militant gun owners, a living martyr whose infamous 1992 shoot-out with federal agents helped ignite "a seething backlash in the country," as the N.R.A. puts it. But as Randy Weaver looked out his window in a rural Iowa town last week, watching children play on the freshly mowed grass of a park across the street, he sounded more like a struggling single parent than an antigovernment desperado. The children on the lawn reminded him of Samuel, his 14-year-old son, who was shot and killed by federal agents. "He loved the outdoors," Weaver told a TIME...

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