Downtown: Stand-off in Texas

Sept. 25 -- Sixty miles south of Dallas, past locked steel gates and barbed wire, is the armed camp where John Joe Gray, an anti-government right-wing extremist, resides.

Gray, 51, a self-proclaimed “freedom fighter” and colonel in the “Texas Militia,” lives there with his wife, children and supporters — 17 in all.

“We’ll defend it, that’s all there is to it,” says Gray, who was indicted for assaulting a state trooper earlier this year. “You come after us, bring extra body bags. Those who live by the sword die by the sword.”

Alicia, his wife of more than 30 years and the mother of their six children, says, “We’re prepared to die for what we believe in.”

What the Grays believe is that the government has taken away too many of their God given rights. “I’ve put out literature about the new-world order and what’s going on,” Gray says.

A Run-in With Police

John Joe Gray got into trouble with the law last spring, when a car he was riding in was stopped for speeding. According to the state trooper who pulled him over, Gray was carrying a pistol — illegally .

“He said, ‘You got a permit?’” Gray recalls. “I said, ‘No, sir, it’s my God given right to carry.’”

The two men ended up in a scuffle, with Gray biting the officer. Later indicted, Gray refused to appear in court, saying that he acted in self-defense and that the entire judicial system is corrupt and conspiring against him. In protest, he now refuses to obey the law, including paying taxes, and has lived inside an armed camp for the past six months. His compound — which has no electricity or running water — is about an hour’s drive from Waco, the scene of the deadly Branch Davidian stand-off in 1993.

Inside the compound, the vehicles have license plates “issued” by a church called the Kingdom of Heaven. The American flag hangs upside-down. A sign that reads “Kids Inside” stands above a bunker, and sandbags, presumably to be used for cover in case of an attack, rest on the dirt ground. Two years worth of food is stockpiled. And throughout the compound, all the adults carry weapons.