[Note: The following letter was sent to Vice President Joe Biden from Josephine County, Oregon Sheriff Gil Gilbertson regarding the Constitutional rights of the second Amendment to the US Constitution.]
January 15, 2013
Vice President Joe Biden
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, DC 20501
Dear Mr. Vice President,
As the elected Sheriff of this County, I am saddled with the duty, as well as responsibility, to uphold the Constitution and protect those people who placed their trust in me to do what is right.
I believe in our Constitution and all it stands for. We, you and I, are sworn to protect and defend our Constitution as required through the “Oath of Office”. This same Constitutional form of government provided us with the most privileged, and envied, country in world history.
Someone once said our country would collapse from within, without a shot being fired. No nation in the world can do more damage to the United States than we can inflict upon ourselves. We are keenly aware of just that by the accelerated pace in which our central (federal) government is usurping the Constitution. This lends itself to a much broader discussion, but for brevity sake I remain focused upon the Second, and Tenth Amendment issues.
It is so typical of the “big brother” mentality to punish the masses, for the heinous crimes committed by a few despicable individuals.
The Constitution, and Bill of Rights, guarantees liberties to the people. These documents, as you know, cannot be whisked to the side by regulation or executive order. According to these documents, the Executive and Judicial branches were to have NO lawmaking powers. The question then becomes how is it “executive” orders can be enforced as if they were laws?
As such, any rule, regulation, or executive order repugnant to the constitutional rights of the citizens of this County will be ignored by this Office, nor will this office, or the citizens, allow enforcement of unconstitutional activities by federal officers.
We refuse to participate, or allow our law-abiding citizens to be criminalized through constitutionally repugnant actions by misguided intentions or politicians.
Sheriff Gilbertson further states:
If our President ever wanted to polarize our nation, this may be the topic that accomplishes just that. Let me embellish on the two levels of government.
The Sheriff’s Office is the supreme law enforcement officer over their county and the federal government cannot supersede that legal authority.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “…The great innovation of this design was that ‘our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other’” – “a legal system unprecedented in form and design, establishing two orders of government, each with its own direct relationship, its own privity, its own set of mutual rights and obligations to the people who sustain it and are governed by it.” (P.920
Scalia then quoted the man considered to be the Father of the US Constitution, President James Madison, when he wrote in the decision: “[T]he local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the supremacy, no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the general authority than the general authority is subject to them. Within its own sphere.” The Federalist, No. 39 at 245.
Scalia then referred to Gregory, 501 US at 458 when he wrote: “This separation of the two spheres is one of the Constitution’s structural protections of liberty: ‘Just as the separation and independence of the coordinate branches of the Federal Government serve to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in any one branch, a healthy balance of power between the States and the Federal Government will reduce the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front’…”
Referring once again to President Madison, Scalia wrote: “In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided amo0ng distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.” (P.922).
Sheriffs Richard Mack and Sheriff Printz challenged the federal government some years ago (and won)….but, seemingly they were labeled “radicals” and shunned by many. They saw the writing on the wall years ago.
In closing, let me say that taking guns away from the tens of millions of law-abiding citizens, will not solve the problem. One needs simply to examine history of all countries where guns were taken from the citizens to realize criminal activity increases and good citizens are left defenseless. Click here to visit NewsWithViews.com home page.
© 2013 Gil Gilbertson – All Rights Reserved
Gil Gilbertson has approximately thirty-years of national and international experience as a law enforcement officer, trainer, advisor, and senior administrator, in both military and civilian police units.
A veteran of Viet Nam, he has served in the U.S. Navy, Air National Guard, Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve. From 1975 to 1991 Gil was patrol and traffic officer, member of the special weapons tactical team, bomb squad, field-training officer, recovery diver, dispatcher, and jailer for the Waterloo, Iowa Police Department.
Between 1975 and 1996, Gil also served as a professional law enforcement instructor and advisor for the Special Tactics Association and the International Law Enforcement Training Group.
Beginning in 1996, Gilbertson served as the senior liaison for the International Police Task Force at Task Force Eagle, the American contingent of troops supporting the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was a country suffering from anarchy and a bloody civil war. Gilbertson later took charge of an intelligence fusion center sharing information between the International Police Task Force and N.A.T.O.
In 2005, Gil spent a short tour in Iraq advising the local bomb squads, and a national highway patrol. Later Gil joined a tactical team in New Orleans to secure and defend hospitals that had come under sniper attack in the chaos immediately following hurricane Katrina.
January of 2007, Gil was elected as Sheriff of Josephine County, Oregon.
Website: Sheriff’s website
E-Mail: jocosheriff@co.josephine.or.us