Sheriff’s candidate R. Daryl Fisher was really okay with shooting gun owners. We know this because he said so. “You’ve heard people say: ‘You’ll have to pry my gun from my cold, dead hands,’” Fisher said in a speech as he campaigned for Buncombe County Sheriff. “Okay,” was his response.

He apologized for the comment, but he also wasn’t the only one willing to use deadly force against gun owners who didn’t want to give up their rights.

Yesterday, the people of Buncombe County, North Carolina spoke in their primary elections, and Fisher got trounced. Hard.

Now, we need to understand the nuance here. For one, there was no primary for a Republican candidate. My understanding is that the county is roughly 60 percent Democrat, so whoever won the primary here is probably the new sheriff.

Since I don’t live in Buncombe County, I won’t worry too much either way.

What is interesting is that the candidate most willing to kill people for not wanting to give up their rights still got more than 3,000 votes. Kind of sad when you think about it.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think those votes were people who necessarily approved of what Fisher said. Most either accepted his apology, thought it was a joke, or didn’t think anything of it. I’m sure a handful probably agreed with it, though, and that’s really troubling.

The man made a quip about killing ordinary Americans and not only does he not feel obligated to pull out of the race, but he managed to get 14 percent of the vote in a given county.

I guess I should rest easy knowing that he still lost–and lost fairly big. That’s not even close to runoff territory, and there’s not enough of a support base to launch another campaign for sheriff. Not really. In other words, Fisher is pretty much done.

One would hope that his comments about killing average Americans who want to protect their sacred right to keep and bear arms were just a bridge too far for the Democrats of Buncombe County (though I know for a fact a few Republicans crossed the line to vote in this primary). But, I can’t say that for certain. Anti-gunners have seemingly increased their violent rhetoric, and I’m not so sure some of Fisher’s support didn’t come about because of those comments.

Regardless, though, Fisher is probably sitting there today, wondering where it all went wrong. Then again, maybe he’s more self-aware than some presidential candidates of recent years and knows what the problem was. Maybe he realizes people saw his willingness to kill people over what is basically a political disagreement as being something they’d rather not have in law enforcement.

But maybe not. Anti-gunners haven’t shown me much to believe they can think anything they say or do might take things a little too far, not even murdering people.