I wonder how much of that was an older man trying to stand up in a snowbank, sleep deprivation, pure seething anger and other factors that led to his shooting.
Theory A; Martyr move, He knew/believed he wasn't going to get out of there alive in any event. If he wanted to kill someone he very likely could have. He could have used an explosive or engaged with a long gun from the distance he had, or he cold have gotten out of the truck firing if he really did have a gun and intend to use it. No doubt he knew he would have guns trained on him and he sure didn't think he could pull a pistol and fire before being killed, so we can probably rule that out. He likely had no intention of killing anyone. Perhaps he felt that his death would inspire a sense of vengeance and anger. Perhaps he was trying to inspire a properly prepared group to do the job correctly. We may never know why his actions were what they were, or even exactly what they were.
I wont say he wasn't a patriot, to much of this fails to make sense. There has to be more to this story than we know, it just defies explanation in so many ways. Leaving the refuge the way they did multiple times reeks of carelessness and arrogance, almost as if they thought they were untouchable. This is what poor planning got them and I'm sorry to see it. I was pulling for them to have some success although I didn't really expect it with such a small, unprepared group.
The feds dont fuck around, and thats pretty much all this group did and I cant accept that they didn't know better. Did they REALLY think they could reclaim stolen property from the feds this way? I watched a little bit of their live youtube feed and what I saw was a few idiots with NO apparent training, NO organization and a serious lack of hardware. It was laughable considering how much training some militias put their members through.