Illegal aliens are still being rounded up by the Trump administration, and they’re largely being found in so-called sanctuary cities. Minneapolis, the epicenter of much of the outrage about the round-ups, is a prime example. If illegal aliens were handed over to ICE when caught by the local authorities, ICE wouldn’t have needed to swarm entire neighborhoods.
But the truth is that sanctuary cities of various types have a long history in this country, and it wasn’t a problem for your average anti-gunner until very recently.
Researchers have identified 350 to 400 cities that have implemented sanctuary policies, said Loren Collingwood, a political science associate professor at the University of New Mexico and an expert on sanctuary cities.
Sanctuary city policies date back to 1971, when Berkeley, California, passed a resolution to protect military personnel on the USS Coral Sea aircraft carrier who refused to return to duty during the Vietnam War. The policies evolved in the late 1970s and 1980s, as cities started implementing non-cooperation statements and ordinances regarding local enforcement of federal immigration policies.
One-third of all U.S. counties have enacted Second Amendment sanctuary ordinances prohibiting law enforcement officials from enforcing state and federal gun control laws, according to a 2024 study. These policies are proliferating largely in rural, conservative counties in Democratic-controlled states that have enacted gun-control regulations, Rick Su, a law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, wrote in a 2021 report for the American Constitution Society.
“Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions could be understood to be largely symbolic — an effort by certain communities to express their opposition to legislation at the state level,” Su wrote.
Many cities passed reproductive care sanctuary policies after the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, which upheld the nationwide right to seek an abortion, in 2022. Meanwhile, nearly 100 municipalities have designated themselves as “sanctuary cities for the unborn” by outlawing abortion within their jurisdictions.
Now, Su is probably not particularly wrong about what the Second Amendment sanctuary movement is more or less about. It doesn’t matter if the city refuses to cooperate with federal authorities that much in the grand scheme of things because they still arrest criminals and charges get tacked on by federal agents easily enough, even without their help. Gun stores might not want to comply with federal laws because they live in a sanctuary city, but the ATF still controls their licensing, and no one is shipping guns to them for sale without that bit of paper.
But what’s important about these Second Amendment sanctuaries is that, if nothing else, they prove that anti-gunners are lying when they claim that communities should be able to decide their own gun laws.
What they’ve always meant was that local governments should be free to enact more and more gun control, even if the rest of the state won’t. That’s literally the whole of the argument, but they try to frame it as federalism.
Meanwhile, no one on the left dared take issue with sanctuary cities for decades, even as they sought to circumvent federal law. From trying to protect deserters to protecting illegal aliens, it was all good right up until the right started creating sanctuaries, too. Then, suddenly, it became an issue.
Granted, I think being forced to live in Berkley for the rest of your life is probably a pretty good punishment for desertion, but the very same people who want gun control everywhere and don’t like the idea of local governments deciding to ignore federal or state gun grabs are the people who originated the very concept in the first place, and to block things the feds actually have the constitutional authority to address, as opposed to gun control.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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