In traditional constitutional showdown, sheriffs cross legal line on gun laws

Rural sheriffs from Oregon and across the country are defying President Obama, saying they won’t go along with new gun laws. It’s part of a rich tradition of constitutional showdowns in our country but the sheriffs might be crossing a legal line.

What the President calls common sense laws, the sheriffs consider a knee-jerk reaction and a violation of the constitution.

“Making criminals out of honest citizens, that’s not the right path to go down,” said Linn County, Ore. Sheriff Tim Mueller. He believes the federal government is exploiting the deaths of recent victims of gun violence. He wrote a letter to that effect to Vice President Joe Biden.

“I just would like the Vice President to know that we just can’t let, no matter how tragic and how heinous the crimes are, the very few people dictate what turns into federal regulations and laws that infringe upon the constitutional rights of honest Americans,” Mueller explained.

The sheriff and others say they’ll refuse to enforce any of the President’s 23 executive orders or proposed new laws, which include a ban on assault weapons and armor piercing bullets, and new criminal background checks.

Constitutional law professor Andrew Siegel, at Seattle University, figures a lot of what the sheriffs are saying is actually pretty consistent with the division of law enforcement authority today.

“I think a lot of it is posturing in the political battle to determine what kind of gun control legislation is going to be constitutional and not constitutional,” he said. “To the extent that they’re proposing to do something, I thought that the tone and the language (of the letter) was needlessly confrontational.”

It’s one thing for sheriffs to refuse to enforce federal laws, it’s another to refuse to allow federal law enforcement to enforce their own laws.

“They seem to be asserting that they’re going to use their interpretation of the second amendment, that they are going to decide what’s constitutional and if they think there are any laws that are passed, or executive orders that are made that are unconstitutional, they’re going to try actively to block the enforcement of federal law,” reasoned Siegel.

And there, Siegel thinks, the sheriff might be overstepping his legal authority.

Throughout American history, we’ve had similar constitutional showdowns, over taxation, slavery, desegregation even the display of the Ten Commandments in Alabama. The issues have usually been resolved in the courts. And that’s likely how it will go with gun laws, no matter what the sheriff of Linn County, Oregon or Gilmer County, Georgia say or do.

“The fact of the matter,” said Siegel, “there’s not binding Supreme Court precedent on much of any gun control legislation.”