Alva Review-Courier -

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — They railed against politicians, conducted military-style exercises and spoke darkly of confronting tyrants scheming to seize their guns and enslave them.

Yet historian JoEllen Vinyard says the "citizen militia" activists she got to know in the 1990s didn't seem like the types who would abduct a governor or stage a coup.

"I don't think they were dangerous," said Vinyard, an Eastern Michigan University professor emeritus and author of a book about far-right movements in the state. "They reminded me of the good old boys I knew growing up in Nebraska."

But as four men...