When President Obama makes a pitch for more gun-control laws, he likes to have a phalanx of blue-uniformed police officers behind him.
These press conferences are supposed to convince us that law enforcement believes more restrictions on Second Amendment rights makes society safer. But Mr. Obama’s visual is a deception, because only a few liberal, big-city police chiefs continue to put politics over public safety.
I was on a panel Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference to discuss how law enforcement leaders are embracing a well-armed civilian populace to help them fight crime.
I told the audience that I decided to get my first gun two years ago after being a victim of a home invasion in Washington, D.C.
It took me four months to go through the 17 steps required at that time to legally register one handgun.
Now, I cannot take my gun out of my home for self-defense because the nation’s capital is the only place in the country that does not allow American citizens to exercise their right to bear arms.
When I finished my story, Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, who was also on the panel, said: “I trust law-abiding citizens with firearms. I fear criminals. Self-defense is the first law of nature.”
He explained that he views the people of Milwaukee County with concealed-carry permits as able to “assist” hi
Sheriff Clarke is one of many law enforcement officers who has publicly embraced gun ownership and carry permits for people to defend themselves.
Mayors and city administrators are slashing budgets of police and sheriff agencies nationwide, leaving citizens essentially on their own.
As government can no longer guarantee the personal security of its citizens, individuals have the responsibility more than ever to use force to protect themselves and their families.
Holding up a pocket-sized U.S. Constitution, Sheriff Clarke explained, “What we need to do in this country is we need to get to the original intent of the Second Amendment and stop all this ‘might issue,’ ‘may issue,’ ‘shall issue’ because that complicates this whole thing.”
The Democrat, who was first elected in 2002, told a cheering crowd: “The armed citizen made this country free. The armed citizen will keep this country free.”
Law enforcement is now seeing how good people carrying guns in public places can help slow or stop active shooters.
Ronald Noble, Interpol’s secretary-general, made a surprisingly honest statement last October about the horrific multiday terrorist attack at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya.
“Ask yourself: If that was Denver, Colorado, if that was Texas, would those guys have been able to spend hours, days, shooting people randomly?” Mr. Noble, an appointee in President Clinton’s administration, told ABC News.
It’s important to differentiate between police chiefs who are appointed from sheriffs who are elected. Chiefs are generally beholden to the liberal big-city mayors who hired them, while sheriffs tend to abide by the will of the people who elected them.
So it was a tectonic shift in the gun rights movement when Detroit Police Chief James Craig said in January that legal gun owners can deter violent crime and that people with concealed-carry permits contributed to crime going down in his city last year.
Chief Craig spent almost 30 years in the Los Angeles Police Department, where he was indoctrinated with the belief that taking guns away from good people was the answer to crime.
His beliefs shifted, though, after becoming chief of police in Portland, Me., where the number of carry permit holders was high and crime was extremely low.
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