Supervisor's Letter about Firearms, 19 February 2018 (PDF)

Supervisor’s Letter about Firearms, 19 February 2018
Fellow citizens of Blaine County,
There is no county in San Andreas that is stronger than Blaine County in support of the Second
Amendment and the right of individuals to keep and bear arms.
I know this is a subject that is near and dear to the hearts of residents, and it comes up in
conversations often.
One of my responsibilities as Supervisor is to ensure public safety. I have been reviewing our
laws and regulations to see where there are risks that we are not adequately addressing. We do
not want to wait until there is an incident before we decide to do something. It’s my job to make
sure that we do whatever is reasonable and prudent to avoid unnecessary risks, the way any
other county would that was following good public policy.
Law abiding owners of firearms, which include myself, value their freedom and independence,
and none of them want someone to be killed with a firearm by a criminal, or an insane person,
or a terrorist. To protect our rights, we have to take it upon ourselves to make sure that the
public policies prevent those kinds of incidents from happening. This means that we agree to
cooperate with each other and the government about how we own firearms, how we get them,
and how we use them. We don’t do this because we are trying to enable the government to take
away our rights. We do it to guarantee that we have the environment where we can keep
exercising our rights.
Today, there are no laws controlling firearms at all in Blaine County. We do not even have the
laws that would be needed for us to enforce the state laws. This is a risk. Criminals and
troublemakers are aware of this. On my watch I am not going to wait until a disaster happens to
do something about it.
This Thursday in the Assembly I will be introducing a gun control measure that is reasonable but
is very similar to the ones in place in adjoining counties and cities. This will bring us into
conformance with state and federal laws. I hope for your support in this matter.
Respectfully,
/s/ Michael C. Defledhead, Supervisor