The nation’s firearm debate plays out in rural counties, where sheriffs hold broad policing authority.
In a rural pocket of New Mexico, Sheriff Ian Fletcher fights back against new state firearm laws he calls unconstitutional, decrying “out-of-state gun control groups” in a column the Catron Courier newspaper published this spring.
Fletcher says the letter was passed to him by a sheriffs' association and he’s not “the NRA’s puppet.” Colorado passed a “red flag law” this month, becoming the 15th state in addition to Washington, D.C., to do so. Similar legislation is pending in 20 other states. “It doesn’t really matter because he agrees with those sentiments,” Shannon Donnelly says. “Because it’s in our opinion section, I don’t have a problem with him having it ghostwritten.”
.oembed-asset-link {border-bottom:1px solid #e1e1e1;} .oembed-link-anchor {display:block;clear:both;} p.oembed-link-desc {font-size:100%;color:#666;font-weight:normal;margin:0 14px 14px 14px;font-family:'Futura Today Light';text-align:left;} The report points to places such as Custer County, Colorado, where the firearm suicide rate is 32 per 100,000 – four times the state’s average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The debate is intensely personal at times. Sullivan’s son, Alex, was killed in a shooting at a theater in Aurora in 2012, and Spurlock’s deputy Zack Parrish was killed in a shooting in 2017, responding to a man with long-standing mental health problems. The Colorado law is named after him. Research over decades indicates firearms are the most lethal means of suicide nationwide and the best target for new policy, says Matt Miller, an epidemiologist at Northeastern University.
Attorneys general in Washington, New Mexico and Colorado signaled that sheriffs who refuse to enforce the state law will encounter legal headaches.
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