This Sunday saw a pitched battle between two motorcycle gangs in the parking lot of a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas, which left nine dead and 18 wounded.
The good news is there were no bystanders harmed. The bad news is it’s not over yet.
The shooting involved members of the Bandidos and Cossacks gangs, with some involvement of the Scimitars and Vaqueros gangs. The score reportedly stands at eight Cossacks and one Bandido.
A possible cause of the battle, according to Texas Department of Public Safety Joint Information Center, might be the Cossacks refusing to pay Bandidos dues for operating in Texas and for wearing the Texas logo under the club patch on their vests without the Bandidos’ approval.
The Bandidos, like the Cossacks founded in 1969, are the dominant motorcycle gang in Texas. They are said to allow other gangs to exist in their territory, but do not allow them to wear the Texas patch.
The Bandidos are also said to have a feud with the Hell’s Angels, the largest motorcycle gang in the world.
Bad blood between the gangs goes back to at least 2013 when Curtis Jack Lewis, president of the Abilene, Texas chapter of the Bandidos, was arrested on charges that he stabbed two members of the Cossacks during a fight outside a restaurant.
The current war has been building for a month at least according to law enforcement. Reportedly the restaurant management was warned trouble was coming their way, but did nothing. The parent company has now revoked their franchise.
To be fair it’s difficult to see what they could have done short of a 24/7 security presence that would scream “DON’T COME HERE” to both bikers and the general trade.
So what is this all about?
That some people like to ride motorcycles is neither new nor hard to understand. Two-wheeling is some of the most fun you can have on a vehicle which doesn’t leave the ground.
Then there’s the romance of outlawry. There’s a fair number of people in our society who find it just too civilized. The allure of the outlaw band appeals to the desire to take to the open road and thumb your nose at civilization.
With this comes the primal impulse of loyalty to the tribe. In an age of gigantic impersonal nation-states this is very powerful.
With your brothers at your back you can feel powerful! Think on that the next time you’re being bullied by some petty bureaucrat and the thought creeps into your mind unbidden, “Man to man, he wouldn’t have a chance…”
This is not confined solely to the anti-social. I personally know a city attorney in the northern Midwest who likes to don his leathers, leap on his bike and ride down the road, returning with hints of not-quite-respectable adventures and bar fights.
And there are the material advantages. The lucrative criminal enterprises these gangs engage in are said by law enforcement to include trafficking in marijuana, cocaine and meth.
This is not confined to the U.S. A few years back there was a motorcycle gang war involving the Hell’s Angels in Sweden. Just last month the Night Wolves, a Russian gang, rode through Eastern Europe to demonstrate their support Putin’s dreams of resurgent Russian nationalism. Until they were stopped at the Polish border.
The outlaw biker gang is an odd phenomenon. They harken back to an age of feuding tribes, but depend on industrial civilization to build and maintain the roads and vehicles they use.
They proudly proclaim their outlaw status, but their survival depends on the laws of a free society. Because face it, how difficult would it be to wipe out gangs of conspicuous law-breakers who wear identifying badges and often tattoos, if society decided to ignore due process?
Their existence is mostly a nuisance to the larger society as long as they obey the first rule of civilized gang warfare: If you’re not a player, you’re not a target.
And I wonder, is there something about their existence we find thrilling in a guilty sort of way, as long as they confine their wars to themselves?