Lee’s note: This guest column is from Sarasota County (Florida) Sheriff Kurt Hoffman:
I read with interest the actions by President Biden to “address gun violence,” all of which is pure nonsense and political theater. Not only do proposals like these continue to infringe on the constitutional rights of the citizens of Florida and Sarasota County, but they concurrently have no impact on criminal activity in our communities.
Look no further than Los Angeles, Detroit, Baltimore, Seattle, Chicago, or other Democrat-controlled cities to see that draconian restrictions on citizens’ right to protect themselves do not make those communities safer, they make them more dangerous.
In the city of Chicago, 706 people have been shot since the beginning of the year, yet the city touts its gun restrictions as some of the toughest in the nation.
The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office reduced violent crime by 54% by specifically focusing on crime and criminals, not on disarming our citizens.
It worked here and it can work in Chicago, too.
The President purports in his press release to “invest in evidence-based community violence interventions” to the tune of $5 billion. What the President should do instead is stop feeding the “defund the police” narrative and arrest and prosecute the criminals who are killing our citizens.
Also, in his press release, it appears the President has concerns about illegal firearms trafficking. Remember, Operation Fast and Furious occurred under the Obama/Biden administration and authorized federal agents to traffic in thousands of firearms, one of which was used by a “criminal” to kill a federal agent.
If the White House is truly concerned about firearms trafficking, perhaps the President and Vice President should run, not walk, to our southern border.
While the entire proposal is troubling, it is the President’s proposed nomination of a retired ATF agent and senior policy advisor at the Giffords Law Center, a gun control group, that signals the real war on our 2 nd Amendment rights.
David Chipman recently penned an article in which he stated, “The Second Amendment envisions firearms as being ‘well regulated,’ and individual sheriffs aren’t entitled to decide whether a particular regulation is constitutional—that’s the job of the courts.”
I took an oath to uphold the Constitution, as does every deputy sheriff that serves this community, so I beg to differ with David Chipman and his soon-to-be-boss, President Biden.