Here at Bearing Arms, we’ve fully embraced the Second Amendment sanctuary movement. After all, if states are going to push unconstitutional gun control laws, we have a moral obligation to protect the Second Amendment rights of the people. One way of doing that is by providing sanctuaries for those rights.

Unsurprisingly, there’s opposition to those rights. Anti-gunners would oppose summertime if pro-gunners openly supported it, so of course, they oppose sanctuary counties.

Yet there’s a bit of opposition coming from a surprising source.

If there can be gun sanctuaries, there can be anti-gun sanctuaries.

That’s why Second Amendment Sanctuaries in Ohio have garnered an unlikely opponent: gun-rights groups.

“These people that are pushing this stuff might snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” said Chris Dorr, executive director of Ohio Gun Owners, in his podcast that posted Monday evening. 

After the Clermont County Board of Commissioners on Monday declared the county a Second Amendment County, Dorr wrote a letter asking them to repeal it.

It’s an interesting position to take.

Of course, it’s important to remember that Chris Dorr and his group are part of a kind of hinky network of supposed gun rights groups that have raised a lot of red flags in the gun rights community. But, the question is, does that invalidate what Dorr is saying here?

Well, it might.

The truth of the matter is that “anti-gun sanctuaries” have already existed for years. States with preemption have an ongoing battle against municipalities that seek to ignore those laws. They don’t declare themselves sanctuaries, but the effect is the same. They ignore the law because it suits them. Pittsburgh’s push on gun control predates the explosion of Second Amendment sanctuaries, after all.

Yet it’s also possible that Dorr is worried that if counties just opt to ignore gun control laws, there will be less revenue available for his “network” of organizations.

Or, you know, not.

Regardless of Dorr’s motivations–and I’ll freely admit that maybe his motivations are pure and I’m just a cynical bastard–the truth of the matter is that I don’t see the concerns as legitimate. As I’ve said, anti-gunners have been ignoring preemption laws for ages. They’re always convinced those measures don’t really apply to them for some ridiculous reason. I remember GeorgiaCarry.org battling the city of Atlanta over guns in city parks somewhere around a decade ago.

This isn’t new.

Yet the Second Amendment sanctuary movement is our one ability for counties in anti-gun states or with anti-gun lawmakers to make a bold stand and warn those lawmakers that not everyone is interested in rolling over and giving up their rights. Not by a longshot. It’s our one tool with which to fight back in some of these states, states that it becomes very easy to forget about the folks who understand the role a firearm plays in American life.

For someone to claim that doing anything like that represents some kind of a risk to gun rights suggests to me that they’re someone we don’t need to listen very seriously to about gun rights.