The concept still exists to this day. In some jurisdictions, local sheriffs keep a posse on reserve, activating them for any number of reasons. Modern posses don’t always carry weapons, but they help the local sheriff’s department with manhunts, looking for missing persons, natural disasters, and other emergencies.
But a sheriff in Virginia has a different motivation for deputizing hundreds or even thousands of county residents: He wants to ensure they get to keep all of their now-legally-owned firearms in case Democrats who now control the legislature and governorship go after them with confiscation laws and other gun control.
As per the Nationalist Review:
The sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia deserves the praise of every American who holds the Second Amendment near and dear to their hearts. In the wake of numerous gun control proposals from incoming Democrat lawmakers, Sheriff Scott Jenkins has hit back, promising to deputize thousands of his constituents should any bill threaten their constitutional right to own firearms and thereby impact their ability to defend themselves and their loved ones.
That’s how it’s done in today’s modern world, where Democrats never met a gun control law they didn’t like — including confiscating currently-owned guns like “assault weapons” they simply don’t think Americans ought to be able to own (note that the founders didn’t limit the kind of firearm citizens could own to simply ‘pistols’ or something less).
Jenkins’ announcement comes on the heels of a vote by the seven-member board of county legislators, who unanimously approved a resolution to make Culpepper County a “Second Amendment sanctuary” along the lines of the way Left-wing cities, counties and, in the case of California, an entire state, a ‘sanctuary’ for illegal aliens.
The concept works like this: Despite laws passed by federal or state lawmakers, local jurisdictions vote to simply ignore them by refusing to assist federal or state authorities in enforcing them.
When state and federal authorities can no longer rely on local authorities for assistance, that severely limits their power because they simply don’t have the personnel to be everywhere at once.
States have done the same thing with the federal marijuana law that makes recreational use of pot a felony. Several states have passed laws that ‘legalize’ use of pot for both medical and recreational use, despite the fact that it’s against federal law. Quite plainly, there aren’t enough federal authorities to go into entire states and round up everyone who is breaking national marijuana laws.
The tactic is called “nullification” and it simply means that local jurisdictions make laws they don’t agree with ineffective by refusing to participate in their enforcement.
Mind you, Democrats have no problem when they use nullification to ignore laws they don’t agree with — like the federal pot law. But they get angry when conservatives and constitutionalists move to nullify their laws because they believe, arrogantly, that they are always right and everyone else is always wrong.
Doesn’t work that way, and Sheriff Jenkins aims to prove that to them. (Related: Virginia sheriffs lining up to support ‘gun sanctuaries’ while daring state Democrats to come take their guns.)
“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,” Jenkins noted recently.
“If the legislature decides to restrict certain weapons [in a way] I feel harms our community, I will swear in thousands of auxiliary deputies in Culpeper,” Jenkins added. “There’s no limit to the number of people I can swear in.”
Exactly right. This is what resistance really looks like.
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