Former police chief Art Acevedo made his name as an anti-gun police chief in Houston, Texas. He routinely lashed out at what he saw as lax gun control, probably as a way to deflect from any failures in performing his job.

Over and over again, he’s betrayed his lack of understanding of the Second Amendment. In an op-ed, the former chief does it all over again.

Politicians spend a lot of time arguing about police reform and how best to combat violent crime. As a former police chief with 35 years in law enforcement, my answer is we can reform the nation’s police departments and combat violent crime at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Lawmakers also debate whether embracing gun rights precludes enacting common sense gun safety legislation. I heard back-and-forth on this often in my home state of Texas, while serving as chief of police in Houston and Austin. I’ve always felt we can adopt common sense gun safety laws while respecting the gun rights of law-abiding Americans.

One thing law enforcement officers cannot do, however, is fight crime and violence with one hand tied behind our backs, which is what “permitless carry” laws being introduced around the country require us to do.

Except that permitting requirements turn our right to keep and bear arms into a privilege to be doled out by the government. That’s not “respecting the gun rights of law-abiding Americans.”

But Acevedo continues to show either profound ignorance or a complete disregard for reality:

With permitless carry, anyone wishing to carry a firearm essentially can do so with no questions asked. Most states require a permit to carry a concealed handgun in the United States, according to Everytown.org, an anti-gun violence group. But there are now some two dozen states with permitless carry on the books, and more are joining their ranks all the time.

First, with the Georgia General Assembly’s passage of constitutional carry, exactly half the states no longer require permits – Georgia’s hasn’t been signed yet, making this one a technicality, but even Acevedo has to recognize that the days of that statement being true are numbered.

Further, Everytown isn’t an “anti-gun violence group.” They’re a gun control group. Cloaking their mission in euphemisms doesn’t change the facts of what they are.

After all, Everytown doesn’t exactly get vocal over tougher sentencing for violent criminals or lash out at bail reform efforts that install revolving doors on our jail cells. They do nothing about “gun crime” except try to restrict our right to keep and bear arms.

The truth is that Acevedo is a favorite police chief of the gun control crowd because he’ll swallow everything they try to feed him.

Constitutional carry has been on the books in many states for years, and law enforcement has managed to do just fine.

Further, we have a lot of rights that tie law enforcement’s hands. Would Acevedo like for us to just kindly ignore the Fourth Amendment, for example?

The Constitution exists not to dictate what our rights are – these come as a result of being free men and women, as all people should be – but to dictate what the government can and can’t do. It exists precisely to tie the government’s hands behind its back.

That includes law enforcement.