The following editorial appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Thursday:

The unlawful armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon could be close to ending. Or not.

Such vigilante actions have a way of inspiring copycat protests elsewhere, often by militants who are more fanatical than their predecessors. So there could be more trouble just around the bend even if authorities are able to end the nearly monthlong seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore.

The death of at least one militant and wounding of another in a shootout with law enforcement officers Tuesday is regrettable, but the protesters seemed to be prepared for this eventuality. In fact, they were inviting it.

As soon as this Jan. 3 seizure escalated to armed confrontation, responsibility for any tragic conclusion rested solely with the extremists.

Protest leader Ammon Bundy, who was arrested in Tuesday’s confrontation, always had it in his power to disarm and turn the symbolic occupation into an encampment-style protest — sort of a right-wing Occupy movement. 

Instead, Bundy and his supporters decided to make this a gun-rights stand on top of other ill-conceived demands that federal lands be ceded to private ranchers.

The protesters took on the mantle of lawless fanatics, initially using their guns to stand up for two men convicted of arson for having set fire to federal land and to hiding the fact that they had been poaching. 

The gunmen defied local police and federal authorities to intervene. Local groups urged the protesters to end their siege. Law enforcers demonstrated extraordinary tolerance when Bundy and others would leave their encampment to travel, hold meetings or stock up on food.

 Their taunting manner and threats to shoot law enforcers turned the protest into something more akin to a terrorist standoff than a fight for liberty.

The Bundy Ranch Facebook page describes the protesters as “peaceful patriots … supporting the Constitution” and asks, “Who are the terrorists?”

They were not peaceful. They were not patriots, and they were not supporting the Constitution. In our book, they are outlaws whose infliction of terror was never justified, regardless of the cause.