Nevada Congressman: Bundy Militia Needs to Leave Because They're Making Residents Nervous

A freshman Nevada congressman said the militiamen need to leave the area around Cliven Bundy’s cattle ranch because they’re scaring kids trying to walk to school.

Rep. Steve Horsford (D-Nev.), who represents the recently created 4th District of central Nevada, told MSNBC that he spent Thursday in Mesquite, “meeting with residents who actually live in Bunkerville, who are neighbors of Cliven Bundy, who live in the Moapa Valley community.”

“And they, like myself, are extremely frustrated by the fact that we have these armed militia in our community, the fact that children in Bunkerville, which is a community of only about 1,200, 1,300 people cannot walk around the corner to their school without armed militia on the hills of our community, that they can’t go to church on Sunday without armed militia being in or around the church because Cliven Bundy is there and the armed militia are there,” he said.

“And his comments today do not reflect our community. They don’t reflect the majority views of Nevadans or the Western way of life and the way that most of us feel. They are racist. His comments were racist. They are infused with bigotry and hatred. And they belong in the dustbin of history,” added the first person of color to represent Nevada in Congress.

“He profiled the African-American community, and it’s so ironic and hypocritical because he says that people don’t understand his way of life, but yet he would profile and make judgments about another community’s way of life. He’s wrong. He’s racist. And we need to have the armed militia leave our communities.”

Horsford said it’s “the neighbors of Cliven Bundy” who told him “that they want their community back, that they want it to be back to normal, and that this doesn’t reflect our community.”

“And these people are not here to solve local land use problems. They have come with an agenda. And that agenda doesn’t belong in Mesquite, in Bunkerville, in Moapa, or any place in Nevada,” the congressman continued. “In fact, some of the ranchers that I met with today and that I’ve met with previously feel like he is breaking the law, that he’s getting special treatment, because we have a lot of responsible ranchers who have paid their grazing fees, who have cooperated to move their cattle to other areas, and were compensated fairly for doing so, but because Cliven Bundy doesn’t want to follow the law he is trying to hold himself out as some type of victim here, and it’s not reflective of other responsible ranchers who have done the right thing, who have paid their fees, and who recognize the rule of law.”