Sierra County Commission passes resolution supporting non-enforcement of “Red Flag Law”

by Kathleen Sloan | March 18, 2020
5 min read
Claiming the new “Red Flag Law” is in violation of the Second Amendment, the Sierra County Commission unanimously passed a resolution yesterday supporting Sheriff Glenn Hamilton’s intention not to enforce it when it goes into effect May 20. 

The resolution first declares the County Commission and Sheriff Hamilton “have long recognized the necessity of the right to keep and bear arms for citizens to protect themselves and their property.” 

Then it gives a history lesson in the Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court decisions upholding the right to keep and bear arms “as an extension of our natural human right to self-defense and they forbade government, both federal and state from infringing upon it.” 

The New Mexico Constitution “built upon” the “natural human right to self-defense,” and “no law shall abridge the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms for security and defense, for lawful hunting and recreational use and for other lawful purpose. . .” the resolution states. 

The County Commission and Sheriff “declared Sierra County to be a Second Amendment Sanctuary County” on Feb. 26, 2019, the resolution reminds us. 

It then gives five points why the “Extreme Risk Protection Order Act” or “Red Flag Law” is flawed, all variations on a due-process theme.   

First, it allows a district court to order persons to give up their firearms without first giving them a hearing. 

Second, it replaces an “adversarial system of justice” with an “inquisitorial system,” referring to the lack of due process in facing one’s accuser and having a hearing before being deprived of one’s property, or of even being present when a judge issues the order. 

Third, the “presumption of innocence” and “due process requirement of demonstrable fault as a precondition to any punishment or sanction that would result in the loss of liberty,” would be negated by the Red Flag Law. 

Fourth, the court can hear the accusing party’s “untested” claims, not in the accused’s presence and deprive them of firearms based on “what a person might do as opposed to what they are alleged to have done. . .” 

Fifth, the law doesn’t require the person accused of being a danger to self or others to be evaluated or treated. 

The resolution ends with the County Commission recognizing the Sheriff’s power to decide whether firearms laws are constitutional: The Board “supports and recognizes the Sierra County Sheriff’s right, in the exercise of his sound discretion, to prioritize the law enforcement duties of the deputies assigned to his office and not to enforce any unconstitutional firearms law against any citizen within Sierra County or the State of New Mexico.” 

The County Commission did not make the resolution public before passing it. See the Sierra County Sun’s “Sierra County plays hard-to-get with resolution proclaiming it will not enforce gun-control ‘Red Flag’ law” for more information. 

For more information on what the law says, please see the Sun’s “Red-Flag gun law ‘unenforceable’ says Sheriff Glenn Hamilton.” 

County Commission Chairperson James Paxon read three letters opposing the resolution and one in favor. 

Diana Tittle asked that action on the “hotly contested” resolution be delayed until it was made public and to do otherwise was “a dereliction of due democratic process.” 

“I object to any attempt on the part of the county commission or sheriff to nullify a duly passed and signed state law,” Tittle said. “Neither commissioners nor law enforcement officers have the authority to decide by fiat which state or federal laws to uphold or ignore.”

Deb Nicoll also said the lack of a resolution before ruling on it was “a great disservice and insult to your constituents.” 

“If . . . you resolve to give the sheriff your blessings not to enforce Senate Bill 5,” Nicoll said, “then I, and many others in the county, are opposed to your resolution. SB5 could potentially save lives.” 

“In the event that someone is injured because the sheriff did not enforce SB5 then the sheriff, and the people of Sierra County, will have to bear the moral consequences of not living up to our duties as humans,” Nicoll said. “We will also have to bear the financial consequences of a law suit against the county and the sheriff. As you know, this county can ill-afford such expenses.” 

New Mexico has the fourth highest suicide rate in the country, Nicoll said, with three or four suicides in Sierra County a year. 

“I cannot imagine why the county would not wish to remove guns from a potential suicide and get that individual into treatment,” Nicoll said. 

Dan Lorimer urged the County Commission not to make its constituents “unwilling renegades” by “turning the county into a scofflaw county.” 

A family, whose name was not clear, said they supported Sierra County being a Second Amendment Sanctuary County and opposed the Red Flag Law. 

Two people attending the meeting were in favor of the resolution and opposed to the new law. 

Jim Springer said it is “so clearly unconstitutional.” 

Tammy Lane said “I support backing the Sheriff,” and “guns are only for safety and to feed our families.” 

Before the County Commission voted on the resolution, Commissioner Travis Day said, “Do you believe it has come to this?” also stating the law was clearly unconstitutional.  

The measure passed unanimously. 

Sheriff Hamilton said the State Legislature wrote the law “hastily in back rooms,” and only made it public 15 minutes before the Judiciary Committee passed it “and then it went straight to the floor at that point.”

County sheriffs’ input “was completely ignored,” Hamilton said, warning that the New Mexico Sheriffs’ Association would likely be filing a lawsuit soon. 

Of the 33 counties in the state, 29 are “Second Amendment Sanctuary Counties,” according to Cibola County Sheriff Tony Mace, who is on the board of the New Mexico Sheriffs’ Association. 

New Mexico Counties Association General Counsel Grace Philips could not confirm if or how many counties have passed Second Amendment Sanctuary resolutions or resolutions opposing the latest Red Flag law. 

“But resolutions do not have the force of law,” Philips said. 

“I think it is unlikely a New Mexico court will find that this law violates the Second Amendment on its face,” Philips said, “considering how consistently these red-flag laws have been upheld in the face of second amendment challenges by courts around the country.” 

“Law enforcement officers are always called upon to use discretion in applying the law,” Philips said, “but that is somewhat different than declaring a law is unconstitutional. The courts have the responsibility for passing on the constitutionality of laws. It’s a separation-of-powers principle.” 

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Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

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