There’s always been a certain degree of discretion afforded to both prosecutors and law enforcement officers. It’s why you sometimes get a warning when you’re caught speeding, or when a cop catches someone doing something and tells them to knock it off, rather than hauling the person to jail. It’s when a DA decides to drop the charges against someone who might have done something wrong, but the prosecutor figures they’ve already learned their lesson.
It’s been going on pretty much since forever, but now things are a bit different. Some authorities make a big deal about how they’re not going to enforce immigration law, even if it just means letting the feds know they caught an illegal alien committing a felony. In response, a lot of sheriffs and prosecutors in places like Virginia have been saying they won’t enforce the new laws in that state.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
Now, though, it seems another sheriff has decided to make the same stand, and that’s certainly new. Unsurprisingly, some people are very upset by this.
Augusta County Sheriff Donald Smith has now declared himself, in effect, a constitutional sheriff – the final arbiter within his jurisdiction on new state laws set to go into effect on July 1 on gun rights.
And as such, Smith has gone public with the not surprising at all declaration that he “will not enforce gun control laws” passed by the Virginia General Assembly, signed into law by Gov. Abigail Spanberger, and set to go into effect tomorrow – July 1.
“The Augusta County Sheriff’s Office is committed to upholding the Constitution in its entirety, regardless of state law,” Smith declared, nonsensically – given what he’s saying he’s going to do, or not going to do – in a lengthy statement posted to Facebook late Tuesday night, hours before the new laws go into effect across Virginia.
Including in Augusta County, whether the MAGA sheriff here accepts that as fact or not.
Maybe it’s just me, but it would be a lot easier for me to swallow all this outrage if the same people were just as outraged over illegal alien sanctuaries as they are about a sheriff saying he and his department won’t enforce blatantly unconstitutional gun laws.
The Constitution grants authority for immigration matters to the federal government, not the states. They don’t get a say in the matter, yet many have decided not to play ball with the feds. Since they can’t be forced to make a call when a child predator who came into the country illegally from Guatemala gets arrested, all we can do is criticize their decisions.
Likewise, Smith cannot be forced to act on every report he might get of supposed violations of the state’s new gun laws. Especially after Virginia Democrats passed a law basically protecting their right to do so. They meant for it to just apply to prosecutors who were ignoring marijuana laws, but they didn’t write it that way, so now they’re kind of stuck.
It also illustrates just how much they enjoy double standards.
Immigration or pot? Nah, no need to follow the law there. Guns, which are expressly protected in the Constitution? That’s something else entirely, and everyone needs to burn unless they act in complete and total support of the regime.
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