OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — A statewide movement to shield Mississippi from the possibility of future legal restrictions on firearm ownership and access will come to Oktibbeha County at Monday’s board of supervisors meeting.
Sixteen county boards since January have voted to become “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” meaning they would not enforce any state or federal legislation they believe to be in violation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The amendment states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Each county will use any “legal means at its disposal” to protect the Second Amendment, “including through legal action, the power to appropriate public funds, the right to petition for redress of grievances, and the power to direct the law enforcement and employees of (the) County to not enforce any unconstitutional law,” the resolution states.
The proposal will come before Calhoun, Franklin and Monroe counties in addition to Oktibbeha on Monday morning, and each board will have the option of voting on it. So far none of the counties presented with the resolution have voted against it, said state Rep. Dana Criswell (R-Olive Branch), a vocal advocate for the movement.
District 4 resident Scott Ivy — a constituent of Supervisor Bricklee Miller — will present the resolution to Oktibbeha County supervisors Monday. He said he decided to approach the board after seeing a call to action on social media for residents of every county to do so.
“Usually I like to be the one that sits in the back and lets somebody else do it, (but) I waited a day or so and nobody jumped in, so I took it upon myself,” Ivy said.
He supports “a certain extent” of restrictions to keep guns out of the hands of “someone who’s extremely crazy” but believes some laws he has seen proposed in other states go too far. He said he fears gun restrictions getting to the point to where they punish law-abiding citizens.
“Say my ex-wife didn’t like me too much,” Ivy said. “All she has to do is call the FBI and report that I have guns and say that I’m going to do something, and they’d come and take my guns, (even though) I’m completely innocent.”
The statewide and nationwide effort
At least one county in a total of 35 states has adopted the resolution, including the entire states of Alaska, Idaho, Kansas and Wyoming, and most of Kentucky, New Mexico and Virginia, according to a map on the sanctuary county movement’s website. Maricopa County, Arizona, home of the state’s capital of Phoenix, passed the resolution Thursday.
Alcorn, DeSoto and Lawrence counties were the first in Mississippi to pass the resolution in January. Lincoln, Madison, Panola, Rankin, Tishomingo and Union counties were next on Feb. 3, followed by Grenada, George, Jackson, Stone and Tate on Feb. 18, Pike on Feb. 20 and Greene on Wednesday.
DeSoto County amended the text of the resolution before passing it to replace “sanctuary” with “safe haven” to make it clear that the county was not resolving to harbor undocumented immigrants, according to the DeSoto Times-Tribune.
The resolution is under review from attorneys in Choctaw and Simpson counties. The boards of supervisors in Attala, Hancock and Neshoba counties will hear the proposal in March.
There have been no requests as of Thursday afternoon to add the issue to the Lowndes County board of supervisors’ Monday meeting agenda, County Administrator Ralph Billingsley said.
The movement started in some Virginia counties as a reaction to gun control measures that have been moving through the Democrat-led Virginia Legislature. The state House of Delegates, the equivalent of the House of Representatives, passed a bill Feb. 11 that would make buying and selling assault weapons a felony, though the bill has since died in the state Senate.
The Virginia state Senate has advanced measures including restrictions on gun purchases per month, required reporting of lost or stolen guns to the police, expanded background checks and a tougher penalty “for leaving a loaded, unsecured firearm in a reckless manner that endangers a child,” according to NBC Washington.
In Mississippi, Criswell co-authored a House concurrent resolution with 18 other Republican legislators that would apply the proposed county resolution to the entire state. It was referred to the House Rules Committee on Feb. 17.
Criswell also co-sponsors a House bill that would allow Mississippi to enter an agreement with eight other states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia — to operate as Second Amendment “sanctuary states” together. Each governor would appoint members of a task force that would meet to discuss ways to protect the Second Amendment, Criswell said. The bill was referred to Judiciary Committee B and the Interstate Cooperation Committee on Feb. 10.
County leaders’ views
An approved resolution is not the same thing as a law, but it is essentially a promise that a governing body will support the public and local law enforcement in the face of an unconstitutional gun law, Criswell said.
“A sheriff is the constitutional enforcer of that county,” he said. “If a law comes down and (the government) tells him to enforce it, but it has not been adjudicated by the courts, he has every right and a statutory obligation to determine if that’s an unconstitutional law.”
Oktibbeha County Sheriff Steve Gladney said he supports the resolution.
“I’m a gun owner and a sportsman, and I support law-abiding citizens’ right to keep and bear arms,” he said.
But leaving constitutional judgments up to individual counties could become confusing and risk venturing outside the purview of existing statutes, said state Rep. Rob Roberson (R-Starkville), who also serves as the Oktibbeha board of supervisors’ attorney.
“Whenever (someone is) asking for the county to outlaw something that has not already been federally or state-outlawed, I have a tendency to say we need to stay within our boundaries, and it really has nothing to do with the issue,” Roberson said.
District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer said he generally supports the right to bear arms with exceptions for military-style weapons, but he sees no need for the resolution since there are no current obstacles to the Second Amendment in Mississippi and since the state might pass its own resolution.
But District 1 Supervisor and Board President John Montgomery agrees with Criswell that counties should be prepared in case state or federal leadership changes and proposes firearm restrictions.
“I don’t want something like what happened in Virginia to happen here, so if we can do something to prevent that, I’m certainly for it,” Montgomery said.
Supervisors Marvell Howard of District 3 and Miller of District 4 both said they needed to research the issue, and District 5 Supervisor Joe Williams said he did not want to comment until after the board discusses the resolution on Monday.
Criswell said he is proud that the movement has been a citizen-led, grassroots effort. Ivy started an online petition for the resolution in January that has gathered 166 signatures, and he believes it would have a lot more if he had sought signatures in person, he said.
“I believe in my right to defend myself and I like hunting too, so I’m going to do everything I can to keep it,” Ivy said.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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