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[[File: David_koresh.jpg|300px|thumbnail|left|David Koresh/Vernon Howell]]
__NOTOC__From February 29, through April 19, 1993 millions of Americans and people from all over the world were glued to their television sets as they watched the violent standoff between an obscure religious sect, known as the Branch Davidians, and the federal government unfold. Most people viewed the events as a curiosity, but some were genuinely worried and afraid that the result would end up similar to what happened months earlier in northern Idaho when a survivalist named Randy Weaver was involved in an armed standoff with federal agents that left his wife and son dead. Unfortunately, they were right – the standoff outside of Waco became one of the most tragic events in recent American history. By the time the standoff was over, four members of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF or ATF) were dead along with eighty-two of the Branch Davidians, which included twenty-three children, and scores were injured on both sides. Besides the death toll, which is incredible by peacetime standards, the Waco tragedy sent shockwaves throughout American society that continue to be felt today.
Among the legal impacts of the tragedy were eleven of the surviving Branch Davidians being sent to prison on a variety of charges and two congressional hearings of the events. Perhaps the greatest impact the Waco tragedy had on American society, though, was the lack of faith in the government that it engendered in many and the political polarization it caused on the political landscape as a violent subset of the far-right grew and conspiracy theories on both the far-right and far-left became more prevalent in the American political discourse.
