‘Second Amendment Sanctuaries’ show the chasm of common sense on gun violence.
Lee County Judge Executive Chuck Caudill grew up in Beattyville, but spent many years away, working in New York theater. It’s given him a unique perspective on things like guns and the recent unanimous vote that his fiscal court took to declare Lee County a Second Amendment Sanctuary.
He calls it “political theater.” The resolution would “oppose any efforts to unconstitutionally restrict the rights of Lee County citizens.” The resolution doesn’t trump the law of the land.
Caudill, who voted in favor of the resolution, makes a good point about how this kind of furor over guns highlights Kentucky’s greatest split.
“This just reinforces what everyone has been seeing, this urban-rural divide,” Caudill said. “People in the city need to spend more time talking to people in the country and vice versa.”
In other words, it’s just one more skirmish in the perceived and real culture wars between two extremes, the stereotypes of snooty urban liberals and aggrieved rural conservatives. Like all stereotypes, there’s some truth and some falsehood to both sides, but the chasm gets wider every day and it’s a shame because there’s no issue that needs common sense discussion more than gun violence in America.
(To prove my point, as I was writing this column, someone sent me a Facebook post from state Sen. Phillip Wheeler, R-Pikeville, who called the sitting governor of Virginia a “coon-man” in reference to Northam’s support for gun control legislation. Wheeler is a Transylvania University graduate and a former Fulbright Scholar in Germany, so the fact that the word “coon” rises so readily to his lips is alarming, but also shows the complexity of our divides.)
A State Gun Sanctuary
For one thing, all of Kentucky is already a gun sanctuary. Thanks to Republicans in the General Assembly, Kentuckians can carry concealed weapons without a license almost wherever they want. (Most college campuses are an exception.) Nonetheless, according to Gun Rights Watch, 12 county fiscal courts have declared themselves as gun sanctuaries and many more are working on the change. To further make that point, several hundred supporters showed up in the first week of the General Assembly, with a lot of guns, to urge legislators not to vote for any gun control proposals.
But here’s one proposal that seems like plain common sense. House Bill 76 would prohibit gun ownership by people convicted of a domestic violence offense, which already federal law. Kentucky ranks 9th in the country for the number of women murdered by men, 80 percent of them with guns.
Roger Ford, a Pikeville businessman, is chairman of the Kentucky Second Amendment Coalition. He has no problem with forbidding domestic violence abusers from having guns.
“But let’s enforce the rules on the books, instead of adding new layers of legislation,” he said. So here’s some common ground.
But Ford also thinks it’s fine for counties to form local militias that would stop enforcement as what they see as unconstitutional gun laws, which he thinks is completely reasonable and many city dwellers, including me, see as total and complete anarchy.
Too late for common ground?
Gun control advocacy groups formed in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre of kindergarten students are also tired of talking, they’re going straight to the ballot boxes. Everytown USA, the parent group of Moms Demand Action are using the NRA’s tactics against them, and take credit for the Democratic-controlled legislature in Virginia, which proposed new gun control laws.
On Feb. 13, Moms Demand Action will be at the Capitol for an advocacy day. Kathi Crowe, the Moms Demand legislative liaison for Lexington, says the Second Amendment sanctuary movement is a distraction.
“Ninety-five percent of voters support background checks, and 85 percent support red flag laws,” she said. “The gun legislation we have proposed doesn’t negate the Second Amendment.”
But in the end, it’s a lot harder to have a civil discussion when one side is carrying guns. Crowe said that last year, a few sanctuary advocates came to a Moms meeting at a local library branch carrying guns.
“We welcomed them,” she said. “We were not intimidated by them. We are not anti-gun, we are anti-gun violence.”
Ford thinks the disagreements over guns are one symptom of our larger rural-urban divides, and those have mostly economic roots.
“We are becoming two Kentuckys and that’s a problem for policy makers on so many levels,” he said. “People in rural parts of the states see themselves excluded or left behind, they want more educational and economic opportunities.”
This is such an important point. Kentucky is ground zero of these divides, over prosperity, over jobs, over Trump, over guns, over abortion, over God. Politicians further the split, and yes, the media does too. But we have to at least try to understand the other side. If one group of Kentuckians with guns think their real enemies are the Kentuckians without them, then we are already in bigger trouble than we think.
This story was originally published January 31, 2020 at 7:33 AM.
