by
William Norman Grigg

Recently by William Norman Grigg: Why
Is it a ‘Crime’ To Disarm a Uniformed Aggressor?

The Opinion
page in today’s Idaho Press-Tribune published side-by-side
op-ed columns by Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue and Ada County
Sheriff Gary Raney on the subject of proposed civilian disarmament
measures. (The essays are hidden behind the paper’s ridiculous paywall.)
The comparison is quite instructive.

Sheriff Donahue,
who has played to his constituents by
joining the ranks of Second Amendment Refuseniks, condemns Barrack
Obama’s civilian disarmament as “political posturing,” while professing
his confidence that “Congress would not be so foolish as to let
anyone strip us of our Second Amendment [sic] rights.” He also regurgitates
the long-stale and always-unedifying talking point that the country
deserves a “meaningful dialogue” on gun-related violence.

Donahue adroitly
misdirects the reader from what should be the central question:
What would he do in the event that Congress were so foolish as to
enact gun confiscation laws?

The astute
reader will notice that Donahue gives the game away in this statement
from the first sentence of his third paragraph: “Law-abiding citizens
have every right to own legal firearms….” Here he takes refuge in
a familiar statist tautology: Our “Second Amendment [sic] rights,”
on this construction, consist of the freedom to own whatever firearms
the government permits us to have.

Later in the
essay, Donohue – succumbing to the irresistible temptation to boast
about his supposed accomplishments – describes how he has “worked
for years with dedicated ATF agents and other local law enforcement
officers to keep illegal guns, like sawed-off shotguns, off our
streets and enforce laws prohibiting felons from owning or possessing
firearms.”

Sheriff Donahue’s
message to gun owners is: You can trust me not
to help the Feds disarm you, because I only work alongside the Feds
to seize “illegal” guns – which actually means that I will disarm
you as soon as they outlaw possession of whatever guns you happen
to own.

For his part,
Sheriff Raney (as
I have noted before) insists that the Constitution’s supremacy
clause – which he deliberately misrepresents – gives the Federal
government plenary authority to disarm the public, and that his
oath of office requires that he carry out federal orders. In his
op-ed, Raney goes out of his way to acknowledge that the Constitution
protects “the right to keep and bear arms” and to emphasize that
“I personally oppose some of the gun control measures currently
under consideration….”

His message
to gun-grabbers is: You can trust me to disarm the public, emitting
a dense fog of persiflage about individual liberty as I do so.

Donahue and
Raney have collaborated to produce a museum-quality example of the
controlled dialectic at work in the campaign to disarm the public.
Both of these sheriffs will carry out orders to confiscate personal
firearms. They’ve just tailored their respective rhetorical approaches
for different constituencies.

We shouldn’t
neglect the role played by the Press-Tribune in this exercise.
The mission statement of the P-T’s editorial collective is: “Empowering
the community.” This means, in practice, sacrificing the rights
of the individual on behalf of the supposed “collective good” –
and justifying the criminal actions of the state’s enforcement caste
when they result in harm to the innocent.

Last August
16, a SWAT team from the Gem County Sheriff’s Office invaded
the home of an innocent couple on the basis of a spurious domestic
violence call. One of them, Detective Rich Perecz, assaulted
the terrified wife, dragging her bodily from her home. The husband
was forced to kneel facing away from at least two officers who held
the muzzle of their “assault rifles” at the back of his head. Then,
without a warrant or probable cause, the
team – led by Gem County Sheriff Chuck Rowland – conducted an illegal
search of the house. They eventually found an item they called
“drug paraphernalia” and wrote the husband – who was left with lasting
injuries after being dropped, handcuffed, on his tailbone – a ticket.

Why did the
Gem County Sheriff authorize a paramilitary raid, rather than a
simple welfare check? One of the deputies identified the husband
as a “constitutionalist.”

The
victims of this home invasion, Michael Gibbons and Marcela Cruz,
tried for months to get the local media – including the Press-Tribune

– to report on the story. Finally, on October 17 – long after
the story had been widely publicized online – the Press-Tribune
published a
masterpiece of statist stenography entitled “Gem Sheriff defends
deputies in video.” (Sheriff Rolland, of course, was involved in
the same criminal actions, and hardly qualifies as an objective
observer.)

When – not
“if” – the Feds escalate their war against private gun ownership,
“local” sheriffs like Donahue, Raney, and Rolland will do as they
are ordered; they will defend their deputies as they commit crimes
against innocent people; and collectivist media outlets like the
Press-Tribune will dutifully retail the Regime’s talking points
in the name of “empowering the community.”

January
31, 2013

William
Norman Grigg [send him mail]
publishes the Pro
Libertate blog and hosts the Pro
Libertate radio program.

Copyright
© 2013 William Norman Grigg

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