Brad Rogers is sheriff of Elkhart County, Indiana — not President Obama.
As such, Rogers says he will respect and protect the Second Amendment rights of his residents and will not enforce any gun control executive actions signed by Obama in the wake of a shooting at an Oregon community college.
Rogers appeared Sunday on WNIT’s Politically Speaking, where he and other guests discussed violence and gun control.
“We’ve always had this conversation that we need more reasonable gun control put in place,” Rogers said, Elkhart Truth reports. “But we already have what is reasonable, in my opinion, and in fact it’s probably overdone.”
He added, “If President Obama today said, ‘I’m creating an executive order that all sheriffs and police chiefs around this nation need to start registering firearms,’ I will disregard it.”
During the show, Rogers was asked how he could oppose Obama and the calls for new gun controls, given that he has given an oath to uphold the law.
While he says his oath calls for him to support and defend the state and U.S. constitutions and to “faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of the office,” he added, “That does not necessarily mean I have to enforce every law.”
Rogers’ recent comments are an extension of what he’s said in the past.
“Gun legislation is not the way to control gun violence,” the sheriff said at a St. Joseph County Republican party event in 2013.
“It will be the next crisis when this gun legislation will come up again,” Rogers predicted.
“It’s not gun legislation, it’s anti-Second Amendment legislation,” Rogers told the cheering audience.
He ended his remarks by saying, “I want to affirm my commitment and my oath of office to uphold the Indiana and United States constitutions, the Second Amendment and all of the Bill of Rights. I will not allow gun confiscation in my county.
“I will not enforce any additional anti-gun laws and I stand with you for liberty as a law enforcement officer, as a sheriff and hopefully to light the flame across this nation for other sheriffs to also stand for liberty and not tolerate the constitutional usurpations that are occurring at the federal level.”
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