A few observations from someone who grew up in Medina, and sat in a patrol car that night either on a road block or at the hospital later in the evening.
I grew up playing with Brad Kapp, and Dr. Martins kids, I was very close to Dr. Martin and his family, I spent a lot of time with his son Peter. Darrell Graf was a little older than I but I knew him as well, hard not to in a town like Medina.
Gordon was a nice guy that had some radical ideas about taxes and the feds. He should not have tried to settle his argument with a Mini 14. The information that LE had at the time is that he did not go anywhere without his Mini 14. I don't know how good that info is, but that is what we as LE had at the time. They had responded to several sightings of Gordon previously and came up empty handed each time. At Medina they knew he was in Dr. Martin's clinic attending a meeting.
Cheshire was the only one with a rifle, Kapp and Schnabel had shotguns, the rest had handguns. I believe that the marshals seriously underestimated Gordons determination, they believed that their show of force, and the fact that Gordon had his family with him would get Gordon to surrender without a fight. And we know how that turned out.
Darrell Graf's book is a self-serving literary piece of crap, more fiction than truth. That is all I will say about Darrell and his book.
I have been in LE for 40 years, I hold a Masters degree in Criminology. I knew in varying degrees the people involved in this incident. Strictly from a Monday morning quarterback perspective: I get that the Marshals had a job to do, but I think they could have chosen a better time and place to do it. I get that Gordon didn't want to go back to prison, but he should have chosen a different method than pointing a gun at LE. In short, both sides really screwed up and the result is a lot of ruined lives.