Editorial: Sheriffs assume key role in debate over guns

[Subdeacon Joe]

http://democratherald.com/news/opinion/editorial/editorial-sheriffs-assume-key-role-in-debate-over-guns/article_40a001f4-676e-11e3-bae8-0019bb2963f4.html

 

December 18, 2013 9:00 am • Albany Democrat-Herald

 

Related Links Click here to read The New York Times story on Colorado sheriffs and gun control.

It looks as if Linn County Sheriff Tim Mueller might have been a few months ahead of his time.

Back
in January, as you may recall, Mueller fired off a letter to Vice
President Joe Biden. In the letter, Mueller said, in essence, that his
deputies wouldn’t enforce any federal law that he believed trampled on
Second Amendment rights.

Now, as the year draws to a close,
sheriffs across the nation (especially in Western states) are starting
to follow a similar line, according to a story that ran over the weekend
in The New York Times.

The newspaper focused on Sheriff John
Cooke of Colorado’s Weld County, who’s making the rounds of the state
explaining why his deputies aren’t enforcing some of that state’s new
gun laws, including one banning ammunition magazines with more than 15
rounds and another one mandating background checks for private gun
transfers.

Cooke is by no means alone in Colorado. Some sheriffs
there say that they won’t enforce the laws because they violate the
Second Amendment — a judgment that, frankly, they might be better off
leaving to the courts. To that point, though, the vast majority of
sheriffs in Colorado have joined a lawsuit challenging the
constitutionality of the statutes — a legal step that, of course, is
well within their rights.

Other sheriffs in the state just say that the laws won’t be high on their list of things to enforce.

Which
raises an interesting point: Certainly, sheriffs swear to enforce the
laws within their jurisdictions — but the fact of the matter is that
they have to prioritize issues, just like dealing with a finite amount
of resources. And, of course, individual sheriffs have wide latitude in
determining which items move to the top of the “to-do” list — in fact,
that’s one of the reasons why we elect sheriffs, to make those judgment
calls about the best ways to allocate scarce resources. If they
consistently make the wrong decisions, voters can toss them out at the
next election.

The truth also is that sheriffs, as elected
officials, always will (at least to some extent) reflect the standards
of the communities they serve. It’s worth remembering that Mueller drew
wide support from county residents in the wake of his letter to Biden.

It
all tosses another bump in the road for those who would tighten
restrictions on gun ownership in Oregon: If the measures are destined to
be widely ignored by Oregon law enforcement officials, what’s the
point? (mm)