In August 1992, a standoff between Randy Weaver and the FBI in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, ended after eleven days with three dead: Weaver’s wife, Vicki, of nineteen years, their fourteen-year-old son, Sammy, and a federal marshal, William Degan; and two wounded, Weaver, and his friend, Kevin Harris. Weaver had been charged in 1991 with illegally selling two sawed-off shotguns; when Weaver failed to show for his hearing the FBI went looking for him, leading to the siege. A Senate hearing in 1995 exposed the FBI’s extraordinary orders of “shoot to kill” and its efforts to cover up the orders later.

On April 19, 1993, David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidian religious sect who was also wanted on illegal weapons charges, and more than eighty of his followers died in a fire in their compound in...