Josephine County has had militias of one kind or another for decades, most of which get pretty well infiltrated by informants who report through local law enforcement, but will express open hostility to feds. Thus, there are vast pockets of "good ol boy country" where gun laws don't apply and they had openly campaigned for the likes of Ross Perot and Bo Gritz, but if they perceive someone as an "outsider" or just see an opportunity in profit from feeding someone to the feds, they will, but the snitch thing is somewhat of a recent development.

I suspect that may have changed in more recent years with the establishment of a federal courthouse and the attendant DOJ offices in new facilities in Grant's Pass. I met a pawn shop owner a while back who explained to me that when the feds rolled in with an actual courthouse and more local offices, undercover sting operations stepped up immediately, since the informant network was already in place. They burned him on a deal where some guy had pawned a hunting rifle then failed a background check to get it back.

Then to make things right with the family, he did the background check and everything to give the rifle back to the guy's brother, telling him that any in family transfer should be none of his business. The two brothers then apparently had informed to their local law enforcement contacts, then the local contacts officially washed their hands of the case and handed it off to the BATF. The two brothers were back in the shop several times with hidden recording devices and eventually elicited an acknowledgement from the shop owner that the rifle went back to the prohibited brother after it left the shop.

I am also looking at maps of that area, and noticing it is roughly in the same general zone as the 2002 "Biscuit fire" where one of the "higher level" fire officials told me during a question and answer session that he was entirely willing to burn out "those wierdos and survivalists living in the back woods". In fact, when I disagreed with that, asserting that we were wanting to go there and fight fires, not guard roads from people who wanted to save their property, I got kicked off the deployment.

Something someone has brought up gets to be a common denominator in these selective business law enforcement and other corrupt issues in that part of the state is that a lot is done through the Masonic lodges and Grange halls there, which are in some shady way the defacto sub-government of those areas. I think in an underneath sort of way, you are going to find that someone is full of hate on the independent mining operations for some really petty reason, like they don't like someone using a road or living in someone's favorite hunting spot. It would be some smallish elite group which has for years regarded those chunks of BLM land to be their own and have probably worked to fight against privatization or development in the past.

When I did gun shows down around that area in the early 2000s, the people scraping a living there were telling me that with Gold at $300/oz, they still needed food stamps, welfare and or retirement income to survive, but it was like having a suppliment. They said if Gold ever broke over $500 a month, they could support themselves and it would be worthwhile. Below that, they either needed other sources of income or would leave the gold claims when there was better employment somewhere, thus returning to the gold claims when they became unemployed again.

The local gold dealers and pawn shop owners never paid spot, not even for gold bullion. Prices as low as 10% of spot in small towns, to no higher than 70% of spot, for bullion, then even lower for nuggets and dust. I did a heck of a lot of business at the Roseburg gun show giving full spot value for bullion gold in barter for merchandise at the regular asking prices. My dad actually lived off that gold for a couple years back when I was in jail and he had been forced to retire early.

There are certain locals who want things to stay under their control, with any kind of financial success to be carefully rationed out. That's the core of their hatred for the gold mining operations, not environmental concerns, that's why you will find out upon digging deeper a lot of those "interests" who are anti-mining are among the same people who logged out the old growth forests, then all of a sudden adopt eco-values when someone else figures out how to make a living out in the BLM lands.