There is no such thing as a “Second Amendment sanctuary.” This concept is a legal fiction adopted by a small minority of local leaders to undermine normal democratic processes and override the will of a majority of a state’s voters.

Any resolution enacted by a local governing body that attempts to pick and choose which state laws apply in a particular jurisdiction is at best a symbolic gesture akin to a protest sign. At worst, these resolutions undermine duly enacted state laws and jeopardize public safety.

Although declarations by local legislative bodies that certain gun laws do not apply have no legal effect, they still have the potential to jeopardize community safety. The kinds of gun laws targeted by these resolutions laws like universal background checks, safe storage requirements and extreme risk protection orders are designed to prevent shootings by addressing different aspects of the gun violence problem.

So-called “Second Amendment sanctuary” resolutions undermine these crucial laws by tacitly (or in some cases explicitly) encouraging residents to violate them. This impedes the implementation of these laws and prevents them from having their full protective effect.

Sorry Chelsea, but it’s not a resolution opposing unconstitutional gun control laws that prevents measures like universal background checks, storage laws, and extreme risk protection orders from having their “full protective effect.” It’s the laws themselves that are the problem.

Universal background checks, for example, were implemented in 2013 in Colorado along with a ban on “high capacity” magazines. Since then, violent crime has soared by more than 25% in the state. The state’s universal background check law is largely unenforceable, and there’s been no real increase in the number of background checks performed since the law went into effect. There also haven’t been many arrests for violating the law, because of near impossibility of actually catching someone transferring a firearm without going through a federally licensed firearms dealer who can conduct a background check on the person receiving the gun.

Similarly, without the ability for law enforcement to enter people’s homes and check on the storage of firearms, it’s impossible to proactively enforce a storage law. Even in states without Second Amendment sanctuaries and storage laws in place, juveniles are gaining access to firearms, as we saw in the recent shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Meanwhile, storage laws that make it a crime for parents to allow a minor child access to a firearm would prevent juveniles from being able to act in self-defense, at least if parents followed the law. Does Parsons really believe, for example, that the mother of this 16-year old should have been prosecuted for allowing her daughter access to a firearm?

A 16-year-old girl managed to scare off an armed intruder in her home Friday morning when she fired a shot at him, Pierce County Sheriff’s Department deputies said.

The incident actually began about 90 minutes earlier just before 6 a.m., when a woman called 911 to report her ex-boyfriend had threatened her with a knife at her home in the 17200 block of 11th Ave. Ct. East. She told arriving deputies she and the man had been involved in several recent domestic violence incidents incidents. Friday morning, he had come back to pick up his belongings that were left in the front yard when he barged into the woman’s home and got into an argument. The man pulled out a knife, threatened her with it, then went outside and slashed the woman’s tires, deputies said.

Deputies used police dogs to search for the man but came up empty.

However, police received another 911 call just before 7:30 from a 16-year-old girl who lived across the street saying she had just fired a shot at an armed intruder.

The teen told returning deputies that after the first incident, she and her mom had gone across the street to check on the woman involved in the first incident. The girl returned home first to find the power had been shut off and grabbed a .22 pistol, deputies said.

Moments later, she heard a noise coming from the backyard and saw the man from before standing in her door.

The teen said the man told her “she was going to die” and tried to stab her with a knife several times. He managed to cut her shirt and give a light wound to her home before she kicked the man away and fired one shot at him. The man ran off.

Deputies saw a man who matched the description walking down a nearby road and arrested him. He was found to have a knife, black airsoft pellet gun, 35 rounds of hollow point 9mm ammunition, and black gloves, deputies said.

The report from KOMO-TV is from 2018, but these types of stories aren’t all that unusual. There was another case in Kentucky just a few months ago where a 14-year old girl had to use a gun to protect her and her sisters from an intruder.

…two men in a white sedan pulled up to a home in Blaine. One got out of the car and repeatedly tried to gain entry by trying to kick in the doors.

Inside the home were three teenage girls, who responded by calling 911. They were home alone at the time, with their father at work and their mother at the store.

At one point, the man who was trying to break in circled around to the backyard and was prepared to bust open a window with a shovel.

When this was about to happen, the man and his driver began to start arguing. During that argument, the youngest of the teenage girls in the home, only 14 years old, had found and loaded the 9mm pistol.

Once she noticed the argument between the man with the shovel and the driver, she fired the gun in their general direction and they left.

As for red flag laws, they simply don’t lead to fewer suicides in states where they’ve been implemented, though they may have a slight impact on the means by which individuals take their own lives. In Connecticut and Indiana, the two states that have had red flag laws on the books for longest period of time, overall suicide rates are up by nearly 20% and almost 30% respectively, though both states have seen a slight decline in the number of gun-related suicides. Extreme Risk Protection Orders take legally owned guns from people who may be at risk of harming themselves or others, but it leaves them with their knives, pills, matches, and gasoline. These red flag laws are gun control measures masquerading as mental health proposals.

Chelsea Parsons says these Second Amendment Sanctuaries are “legal fictions”, but the fact is that the movement is going to continue to spread. In fact, thanks to gun control activists who have ignored state law and put their own local gun control ordinances on the books, opponents of the movement have no high ground to stand on when they rail about sheriffs, prosecutors, and local officials ignoring the law for their own purposes.