It appears that the tense armed standoff between federal agents and citizens at the Bundy Ranch near Bunkerville, Nevada, is over… for now. Fearful of the very real potential of a bloody firefight, BLM and FBI agents did the intelligent thing, and deescalated the situation by simply pulling out… for now.

It has been interesting to note how people have reacted to the situation. Here are just a few examples.

From Tim “MAC” Harmsen of the Military Arms Channel:

This event serves to highlight precisely why we have a 2nd Amendment. What happened today is why Dianne Feinstein and her band of gun-grabbers want you disarmed. Gun control isn’t about public safety or saving the children, it’s about preventing us from standing against government oppression and defending our liberty.

If hundreds of armed Americans weren’t streaming in to stand toe to toe with government goons, you can rest assured this victory would have never been possible. Before large numbers of militia responded to the scene, groups of protesters were being roughed up by government thugs. Women were thrown to the ground and unarmed men were tazed as the government struggled to assert its control. Once armed citizens started to arrive in force, these thugs were forced to back-off and stop using their Gestapo tactics.

In the end we have set an astounding new precedent. Those that faced down the government in Nevada this past week have shown they can in fact be backed down. Americans don’t need to take it on the chin when the government grossly over steps its bounds — we can stand up to them and say “NO”.

Cartoonist Chris Muir of Day By Day Cartoon weighs in:

Bearing Arms contributor Mike McDaniel weighs in at his personal blog:

Should the federal government use desert land unsuitable for virtually any other use for the grazing of cattle that will directly benefit the American people, or should they, with force and violence, kill those cattle and fellow Americans to establish the supremacy and majesty of the Bureau of Land Management lest another uppity rancher think he can put one over on federal bureaucrats?

We’ve dodged the bullet yet again, but I fear the relationship between Americans and the federal government has changed, drastically and dangerously, and it will take a very long time to reestablish the trust Mr. Obama has so callously thrown away.

It is now a virtual certainty that Obamite acts of tyranny will be resisted, by hundreds, even thousands, and if necessary, by force. That sufficient Americans see their government as an enemy of liberty is a very disturbing and dangerous development.

In the end, the Second Amendment merely codifies a pre-existing right of self defense. It is the belief of most governments in this world that such a right doesn’t exist, or if it does, it only exists to the extent that the government allows it. We are nearly unique in the modern world in our belief that the citizenry has the constitutional right to armed self defense even against the government itself.

The Second Amendment is the right that terrifies statists the most.

They have done much to circumscribe and control every other right, but as long as the citizenry is armed with firearms of contemporary military utility (generally speaking, semi-automatic firearms, especially rifles they like to describe as “assault weapons”), there exists the unmistakable fact that we are citizens, we are militiamen, and we are not subjects.