{"id":87027,"date":"2022-10-26T10:29:45","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T15:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=87027"},"modified":"2022-10-26T10:29:45","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T15:29:45","slug":"87027","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=87027","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

BARR: Hate Unconstitutional Gun Control? Make Friends With Your Sheriff<\/a><\/p>\n

A number of\u00a0sheriffs in upstate New York<\/a>\u00a0are declaring that their officers will not prioritize or \u201caggressively enforce\u201d the state\u2019s recently enacted, highly restrictive gun control law. These elected sheriffs have concluded quite correctly that the state\u2019s new law is at odds with both the Constitution of the United States and with the most\u00a0recent U.S. Supreme Court decision<\/a>\u00a0that declared New York\u2019s previous and long-standing gun control law \u2013 the Sullivan Act \u2013 unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

The sheriffs\u2019 actions have rekindled a recurring debate about the powers of the more than three thousand local sheriffs serving in every state except Alaska and Connecticut.<\/p>\n

The United States has had elected sheriffs long before there was a \u201cUnited States of America,\u201d with\u00a0the first one taking office in Virginia in 1652<\/a>. Police departments, on the other hand, are a relatively new phenomenon. The first municipal police department was\u00a0not established until 1838 in Boston, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Unlike most county sheriffs, who hold their positions under their state constitutions, police chiefs answer only to local office holders who appointed them, not to the voters. It is this distinction that has caused a number of sheriffs in \u201cBlue States\u201d to earn the ire of the Left.<\/p>\n

Two factors have exacerbated this enmity in recent years \u2013 increasingly restrictive gun control measures and abusive COVID mandates by Blue State governors and legislatures. Sheriffs who decline to prioritize enforcing such laws find themselves increasingly maligned by the Left, notwithstanding the fact that they are carrying out their sworn duty to support the federal and state constitutions, and in accord with the wishes of the voters they represent.<\/p>\n

Consider Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who declared in 2021 that\u00a0he would not force officers under his command to be vaccinated against COVID<\/a>, as mandated by that county\u2019s liberal Board of Supervisors.<\/p>\n

Even more vexing to liberals, however, is the number of sheriffs who in recent years have refused to enforce\u00a0what they consider unconstitutional infringements on the rights of citizens in their jurisdictions to exercise their Second Amendment rights<\/a>\u00a0in the face of Blue State gun control laws.<\/p>\n

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) berates these sheriffs who follow the Constitution of the United States as\u00a0\u201cradicalized\u201d<\/a>\u00a0officials who do not themselves understand the Constitution. The\u00a0recently discredited SPLC<\/a>\u00a0simply cannot bring itself to accept that elected law enforcement officials should be permitted to resist such government overreach.<\/p>\n

However, these \u201cconstitutional sheriffs\u201d are not alone in their views. Since the Supreme Court\u2019s seminal\u00a0Bruen<\/i>\u00a0decision in June that tossed New York\u2019s Sullivan Act,\u00a0similarly restrictive laws in other states have fallen<\/a>. Even more to the point, some of the very restrictions in the legislation signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul just days after the Supreme Court rendered its opinion, as part of her attempt to undercut the High Court\u2019s directive, were\u00a0blocked last week by a federal judge in New York City.<\/a><\/p>\n

With state and federal courts seeming to agree with sheriffs who decline to vigorously enforce laws they view as inconsistent with their oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, especially as related to Second Amendment rights of citizens in their jurisdictions, it is becoming increasingly difficult for their detractors on the Left to argue with a straight face that the sheriffs are the outliers.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, the gun control group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg \u2014 \u201cEverytown for Gun Safety\u201d \u2014 published a paper highly critical of sheriffs who declined to prioritize the gun control measures the organization championed. The title of the piece was,\u00a0When Sheriffs Refuse to Follow the Law.<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

It is, however, becoming increasingly clear to citizens across the country that it is liberal, anti-gun public officials like Hochul who are not following the law, and that it is constitutional sheriffs who are the ones following it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BARR: Hate Unconstitutional Gun Control? Make Friends With Your Sheriff A number of\u00a0sheriffs in upstate New York\u00a0are declaring that their officers will not prioritize or \u201caggressively enforce\u201d the state\u2019s recently enacted, highly restrictive gun control law. These elected sheriffs have concluded quite correctly that the state\u2019s new law is at odds with both the Constitution … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,13,24,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-law-order","category-rights","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87028,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87027\/revisions\/87028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}