Sipsey Street Irregulars: Oregon County Passes Initiative Allowing Sheriff to Void Gun Control Laws If He Thinks They’re Unconstitutional

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Oregon County Passes Initiative Allowing Sheriff to Void Gun Control Laws If He Thinks They’re Unconstitutional

Coos County residents smoothly approved the Second Amendment Preservation Ordinance Tuesday with more than 60 percent voting for its passage. The ordinance bars public employees from using county funds to enforce any laws the sheriff deems unconstitutional. It also prohibits enforcement of Oregon’s recent law requiring background checks on private gun transfers, including transactions between friends. County employees who violate the measure could face a $2,000 fine.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: County sheriffs already have this authority. This move is just formal admission that a particular one does. That means it amounts to dog and pony show political antics.; November 8, 2015 at 1:49 PM
Crotalus said...: One problem: Someone in authority gets to decide whether it is or is not constitutional. What if the sheriff is a gun grabbing Commie?; November 8, 2015 at 5:34 PM
Doug said...: Pretty interesting piece. And from all places.
How it got past the editorial hoplophobe's is remarkable.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/gun-lovers-arent-heartless-213224; November 8, 2015 at 7:41 PM
Anonymous said...: That's a lot of power in the hands of one man. I'd much prefer the citizen determine what is or is not constitutional, and just not be hassled by hoplophobic panty wetters of the mandarine class.

HinMO; November 9, 2015 at 10:57 AM
Otto Didact said...: Crotalus asked: "What if the sheriff is a gun grabbing Commie?"

Then before long the sheriff and/or his/her deputies get ventilated? I don't figure the folks up Oregon way are too likely to take kindly to a lying gun-grabber-in-constitutionalist-clothing. Assuming a stealth gun grabber managed to get elected, I wouldn't want to insure their life.; November 9, 2015 at 10:58 AM
mjw-1982 said...: Regarding the comments from Anonymous and Crotalus,

I was one of the people gathering signatures for this ordinance. Anonymous is correct that Sheriff's already have this authority, but the fact is no one else seems to know this and very few Sheriff's use the authority when it comes to gun laws. Rob Taylor (the chief petitioner) fully intended this to be a symbolic move and wants it to be challenged in court. That is the only way this issue will get into the mainstream., much like the Supreme Court decision in Heller.

Second, the way the ordinance is written, their will be no negative effect if an anti-gun Sheriff were to be elected. The ordinance only allows the Sheriff to be "less restrictive" not "more restrictive" and it only allows this discretion regarding gun laws, not any other issues. The wording was created by the Second Amendment Foundation and is exactly the same as has been passed in several other counties.; November 9, 2015 at 1:53 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Oregon County Passes Initiative Allowing Sheriff to Void Gun Control Laws If He Thinks They’re Unconstitutional

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