Franklin County, ME — Enough is enough for Sheriff Scott Nichols of Franklin County, Maine. When he received word that Governor Janet Mills had issued a ‘stay at home’ order that included a threat of police action if not obeyed, he made it clear that was not going to happen. Not in his county, at least.
Scott Nichols posted his response to the Governor on the official county Facebook page.
“We will not be setting up a Police State. PERIOD,” he wrote. “The Sheriff’s Office will not purposefully go out and stop vehicles because they are on the road or stop and ask why people are out and about. To do so puts our officers at risk. This is not Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia where you are asked for your papers!”
“Second Amendment Sanctuary” Refresher Course
The gun world was on fire last year and this spring, buzzing about the idea of ‘nullification.’ This idea — dating back to English Common law and well-known to our Founding Fathers — taught that if a higher magistrate was violating the rights of the citizens, it was the duty of the lesser magistrate to ‘nullify’ or interpose between the people and the tyrannical government.
In recent days, we’ve seen reports of people arrested or fined for harmless things like surfing, praying outdoors, holding a church service or driving to work.
And we’re just going to come out and say it: the government has the authority to quarantine sick people. They do NOT have the Constitutional authority to command a complete shutdown of the economy. Or to close gun stores. Or to stop issuing gun permits–it’s outrageous that we even have to get a permit at all!
Individual citizens are being bankrupted right and left and personal responsibility has disappeared. If you are at high risk for this and want to shelter in place? Go right ahead! If you interact with people who are high risk and you don’t want to risk getting them sick? Don’t go to work. You have relatives who are high risk? Take care of them and find a solution that keeps them safe at home.
But shutting down the entire nation is brutal punishment for tens of millions of healthy people and will have repercussions that we can’t even imagine yet.
Where Does the Sheriff Come In?
Any one individual citizen is going to have a hard time standing up to these unconstitutional orders. They’ll get arrested, get smeared by the media, and the same fearful Commie Mommies who dog pile on gun owners will dog pile on them as the dangerous bad guy. All for wanting to go to work — while perfectly healthy — to feed his family.
But as we learned with the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement, a sheriff can interpose between an unconstitutional order and his citizens. And that’s exactly what Sheriff Nichols has done for the lucky citizens of Franklin county.
You Don’t Have to Agree With US
Not everybody is as unconcerned as we are about catching Covid-19. Some folks are considered high risk, or have relatives they interact with who are. That’s fine.
But every single gun owner in the country needs to be on high alert right now. There has been more damage done to our Constitutional rights in a month than anybody could have imagined six weeks ago.
And gun owners have learned the hard way time after time, it’s nearly impossible to get the genie back in the bottle. Once the public perception of government authority shifts to allow them to take away your right to assemble, your right to an election, your right to earn a living, your right to travel freely, your right to own, purchase or carry a gun because the government decides there’s a threat, you’ll never get the public to be as outraged again.
And other than this Sheriff, very few people want to speak up about it. He’s a brave man who is likely getting flamed by fearful people, whipped into a frenzy by the media.
But we’re confident that time will exonerate him.