From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal.

I'm Al Letton.

This month, two mass shootings happened within hours of each other.

Over 30 people were killed.

Afterwards, people asked a familiar question, how could this be happening?

Today, we're going to be tackling that question by looking at how a group of people with

extremist ideas embrace violence to get their way and how their beliefs have spread and

in some ways become more dangerous.

The story takes us back to January 2016.

The sun is shining in the sky, but the air is frigid in a small, Oregon town.

A man and a cowboy hat and a thick winter flannel climbs up a snow bank at the edge of

a grocery store parking lot and calls out to a crowd of his supporters.

I'm asking you to follow me and go to the Mallier National Wildlife Refuge.

And we're going to make a hard stand.

That's Amin Bundy.

His short speech on that snow bank kicked off a six-week arm standoff with the federal government

in a remote bird sanctuary in the middle of winter.

It's crucial that you understand what's going on here, what this issue is truly about.

It's about our federal government taking over private properties.

This is Bundy's second arm standoff.

He and his supporters believe that the federal government has no right to public lands and

should turn them over to the states.

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