Randy Weaver may have been an anti-government racist, but he wasn't bothering anybody and had no criminal record prior to the feds entering his life. Dude had a shack in the middle of nowhere. He was acquitted of all charges except the failure to appear and the government settled instead of going to court over his civil suit.

The government lied to him repeatedly and still expected to be trusted. Undercover ATF agent asked him for years to make some sawed-off shotguns... Weaver said no for years. Finally, the cash gets tight and Weaver makes the guns. A crime for sure, but Weaver wasn't running around selling illegal weapons - they leveraged his need for grocery money so they could entrap him and leverage that to make him an informant. When he said no to becoming an informant, they posed as broken down motorists so they could arrest him when he stopped to help.

Trying to untangle the chain of revisions to the FBIs standard Rules of Engagement after the first encounter is beyond me. The testimony of the sniper that killed Weaver's wife was that he understood there was to be a demand for surrender, but if he saw any armed men before that, he should shoot them, regardless of threat.

The sniper's first shot, which was before the demand for surrender, was aimed at the back of Randy Weaver. A US citizen, who hadn't raised a gun at anybody during the ordeal, was shot in the back from ~200 yards away by an agent of the US government. The sniper's second shot, intended to kill Randy Weaver as he ran back into his house, killed Vicki Weaver.

I know I'm a libertarian whackjob, but I don't think it's extreme to suggest that the government shouldn't treat citizens this way, no matter how disagreeable some of their views may be. They had no interest in Weaver except to use him to go after others. By the time they were done, his wife and son, and a US Marshal, were dead.