(featured image by msummerfieldimages)
Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins has been on the front lines of the fight over our Second Amendment rights in Virginia over the past few months. He generated a lot of headlines when he vowed to deputize county residents so that they would be exempt from any ban on civilian possession of semi-automatic firearms, ammunition magazines, or suppressors, but the sheriff has also been a familiar face at the legislative hearings on many gun bills as well.
image by www.vcdl.org
In fact, Sheriff Jenkins was in the room when the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send Ralph Northam’s gun ban bill to the Virginia Crime Commission to be studied, effectively killing the legislation for the rest of the session. On today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co., Jenkins tells me he had no idea how lawmakers were going to vote when he showed up Monday morning, but he knew it was important to be there.
Jenkins says even with the defeat of HB961, there are plenty of bills that he’s concerned about in the legislature, including “red flag” legislation that’s passed both the House and Senate, although in different forms. Jenkins believes that neither version respects the constitutional rights of Virginians, including their right to due process. The sheriff also says the bill does nothing to address a personal who’s actually in a mental crisis, and notes that while things are slowly getting better, state lawmakers are still not moving quickly enough to address the crisis in the state’s mental health system. All too often, Jenkins says, those in need of mental health treatment end up cooling their heels in a jail cell instead.