VA County Sheriff Vows To Deputize Thousands of Citizens To Fight Potential State Gun Grabs

P. Gardner Goldsmith | December 9, 2019
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Big news on the self-defense front.

As I reported for MRCTV last week, and as MRCTV’s Eric Scheiner discussed with OAN’s Graham Ledger the very next day, the Democrat-held Virginia legislature has seen numerous members propose a fusillade of aggressive and flagrantly anti-constitutional bills that would strip people of their arms and their inherent right to keep and bear them.

But Virginians are fighting back in defense, the latest example of which is powerfully meaningful and very creative.

As Allison Brophy Champion reports for the Culpeper Star-Exponent, Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins announced last week that if the state government passes statutes that he sees as infringements on the right to keep and bear arms, he will negate the statutes by -- get this -- deputizing thousands of county residents.

Said Jenkins to the seven member Culpeper Country Board, all of whom also voted in favor of a resolution to declare the county a “Second Amendment Constitutional County”:

The right to bear arms—some believe that the Second Amendment gives us that right, when in fact it’s a God-given right. If you don’t believe in God, it’s a law of nature that every creature can defend their lives from threats.

And while some might criticize the sheriff for not saying he would openly defy enforcing unconstitutional laws, he is nullifying them in another way, in a manner that is also 100 percent legal and will cause the collectivist anti-rights politicians no end of vexation.

If the legislature decides to restrict certain weapons I feel harms (sic) our community, I will swear-in thousands of auxiliary deputies in Culpeper. There’s no limit to the number of people I can swear in. Personally, I don’t think some of the bills that are proposed will pass, I don’t think we’re that far left in Virginia.

But the fact that the Democrat majority in both houses and unctuous Dem. Governor Ralph “Man-Of-A-Thousand-Faces” Northam appear more than willing to propose or advocate this shocking new wave of anti-rights bills is illuminating, and foreboding.

On December 5, TheNationalist offered a powerful overview of the battlefield that VA collectivists are preparing through the machine of government -- the machine that has proven itself to be the most deadly enemy to rights and human dignity in the history of the world.

Here are three of the most egregious:

Senate Bill 16 would make possession of semi-automatic rifles with a fixed capacity of more than 10 rounds illegal and would additionally prohibit possession of any rifle with a pistol grip or second hand grip. (Threaded barrels) on both pistols and rifles would also be banned. Pistols with detachable magazines would be subject to a weight limit of 50 ounces. This proposal effectively outlaws the private ownership of AR-15s. They would be seized by law enforcement officers.

Then there's:

Senate Bill 18 would make it illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to buy any firearm. Children under the age of 18 would be banned from using a firearm without adult supervision. Some critics of the bill argue that it would make self defense technically illegal for minors.

And...

Senate Bill 64 is perhaps the most troubling of the proposals. This proposal would potentially make firearm instructors liable for the way students use weapons in the future. Should a student end up misusing a firearm for some criminal act, his former instructor could be found guilty of felonious paramilitary activity. Critics argue it could have a chilling effect on gun safety courses.

Said resident Charles Evering at the County Board meeting:

The ultimate end for me is for the governor to realize that we got people out here that think different than he does and he ought to read the Constitution and realize that when he took his oath of office it meant to defend that Constitution, not tear it apart.

The meaning of this populist uprising is stark and brilliant as a supernova. It’s a tremor, welling from deep within the core of American heritage, and it should shake these self-seen gods of Virginia politics into a realization that they are just people, endowed with no more right than any other to threaten acts of violence against innocent neighbors’ rights to exist and defend their existences.

And there’s something else to note about this, something deeper about how politicians view agents of the state and how they view everyone else. The reason Sheriff Jenkins can express his intent to deputize thousands is because, as TheTruthAboutGuns mentions:

He’s pledging to deputize thousands of Old Dominion residents, giving them the Second Amendment protections that will no doubt be built into the Democrats’ gun control schemes as carve-outs for law enforcement officers.

The fact that government rulers are prepared to “carve-out” exceptions for their tax-funded “law enforcement” agents is a very dangerous thing to observe. No one in the government has any right to favor the state over civilians or tell another person whether he can or cannot defend himself – period.

This is a struggle that has been fought since the beginning of mankind, manifesting itself in the Old and New Testaments, in the individualist Chinese philosophy of Taoist Lao Tsu, and in real, physical struggles such as the battles of Lexington and Concord, when the gang of thugs calling themselves “government” from England tried to crush the rights of American colonials.

And it’s the struggle that led to William Penn being acquitted of a so-called “speech crime” in 1670 London, an acquittal that came via jury nullification, wherein the members of the jury would not find Penn guilty of a crime for preaching Quakerism, despite the government “law.” (The case also grew into the first British legal battle to officially embrace the Common Law tradition of “Habeas Corpus,” wherein the government cannot keep people indefinitely detained without offering them an appearance in court to hear charges and see evidence against them.)

The final stand people can make against government tyranny prior to engaging in physical defensive violence is through an informed jury knowing about the power to acquit a defendant if they believe the government statute is wrong and contrary to Natural Law.

And the Sheriff of Culpeper County and the Board are close to taking that step.

This is nullification in another fashion. And it’s an important stand against what anyone with open eyes can see is ever-growing government tyranny.

It remains to be seen if the collectivists will open their eyes to their own attacks on individual liberty.

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