Anti-government activist dead after armed standoff with cops serving eviction notice

An active shooter situation in Pittsburgh that morphed into an hours-long standoff with police that saw hundreds of shots fired has ended with a "sovereign citizen" activist dead, reported The Daily Beast on Wednesday.

"He was identified as 63-year-old William Hardison Sr., with WPXI-TV reporting that he identified as a sovereign citizen — a loosely-affiliated group of anti-government activists who believe they are exempt from the law," reported Erik Uebelecker. "His cause of death was not immediately released."

According to the report, however, the whole incident began with police trying to serve an eviction notice.

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The "sovereign citizen" movement comes in several flavors, but its adherents generally believe that the United States is a fictitious entity with no real legal power, and that through a variety of self-taught legal maneuvers, they can unlock a broad set of rights that make them exempt from most laws. The movement has been around for decades, but has recently gained new prominence as its adherents join with QAnon, the Nazi-adjacent cult that believes America is controlled by Satanic pedophiles who consume children's flesh and blood to live forever.

This incident is not unique, as sovereign citizens have been implicated in violence before; one sovereign citizen in Connecticut is facing trial for beheading his landlord with a Samurai sword. Many others were arrested for storming the Capitol on January 6, and their efforts to use their self-constructed legal theories to escape charges have broadly backfired.

Every now and then, some ideas from the movement seep into mainstream politics. Earlier this year, Colorado GOP state Rep. Kevin DeGraaf faced backlash and was forced to walk back an interview on a conservative podcast in which he espoused sovereign citizen doctrine.