On May 17, 2015, in Waco, Texas, a shootout erupted at a Twin Peaks restaurant where members of several motorcycle clubs (MC), including the Bandidos, Cossacks, and allies, had gathered for a regularly scheduled meeting about political rights for motorcyclists.

Waco police, including a SWAT team, had gathered to monitor them from outside, and opened fire on the bikers after the shootout started. Nine bikers were killed, seven of them members of the Cossacks Motorcycle Club, while eighteen others were injured.

In 2014, the Texas Department of Public Safety listed the Bandidos Motorcycle Club as a "Tier 2" threat, the same rating as the Crips, Bloods, and Aryan Brotherhood, but it did not evaluate the Cossacks. That assessment said that the Bandidos Motorcycle Club "conducts their illegal activities as covertly as possible, and avoids high-profile activities such as drive-by shootings that many street gangs tend to commit."

According to Steve Cook, executive director of the Midwest Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association, an element of the dispute had to do with the right of Texas outlaw motorcycle clubs to wear jackets decorated with distinctive patches, including a geographic bottom rocker reading "Texas", indicating Texas as the territory of the club. The dominant Bandidos claimed the right to approve all such jacket bottom rocker patches. A police affidavit released June 16 described the source of the conflict in similar terms. Following the shootout, police spokesman Patrick Swanton said a between the rival clubs may have been a factor in the deadly encounter. It allegedly started following the beating of a Cossack by Bandidos at a Toys for Tots event in Decatur, Texas on December 6, 2014, and the killing of a member of the Ghostriders MC the next week in Fort Worth. Skirmishes over the issue continued on March 22, 2015. A police affidavit described fighting between Bandidos and Cossacks going back to November 2013, including brawls resulting in injuries, in Abilene, Palo Pinto County, and Lorena, Texas. Some of those previously injured bikers were arrested in Waco after the shootout on May 17.

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Wikipedia