When Longmire and Vic visit the biological parents of the first child abducted there is the sound of a shotgun being racked. The shotgun he was holding was a break action, and would not make that noise. The noise heard would have been for a pump shotgun. The noise made by a break action shotgun is a simple click.
According to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) a child who is a member of, or eligible for
membership, in a federally recognized tribe may not be adopted outside of the tribe without the approval
of the tribal council. The plan is to reunify the child with the parent, or simply to keep the child in the tribe
being raised by other tribe members. A child should never be simply "taken away" and adopted by non-Indian races or cultures without diligent efforts being made to keep the child within the tribe. However, as documented in a government report from 2005 and an NPR series from 2011, at least 32 states have to a greater or lesser extent failed to abide by the ICWA. Therefore the plot addresses a well-documented social and political problem involving the placement of Native American foster children in non-native homes and/or privately run (but, in effect, government-funded) group homes.