A Virginia sheriff has vowed to deputize thousands in his county should the state government pass stringent gun control measures.
The Culpepper County Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed to proclaim the county a Second Amendment Constitutional County last week, according to Fox News. At the meeting, Sheriff Scott Jenkins announced that he would deputize masses of Culpepper residents to protect their Second Amendment rights.
“My office will always encourage and support our citizens in firearms training, concealed carry permits, and the ability to defend themselves and their families,” Jenkins’s office wrote in a Facebook post during the meeting. “If necessary, I plan to properly screen and deputize thousands of our law-abiding citizens to protect their constitutional right to own firearms.”
Dozens of counties across Virginia have passed resolutions similar to Culpepper’s. The pro-Second Amendment wave is a direct response to threats by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam to enact strict gun control laws now that Democrats have taken over the legislature.
Virginia flipped both chambers of the state legislature from Republican to Democratic control in November. The Democratic victory came after limited involvement by Northam, who was embroiled in scandal in the lead-up to the election.
In February, a photo of Northam from his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook surfaced. The photo showed one person dressed in black face and another dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Northam admitted to being in the photo but declined to say which costume he was wearing.
Northam began pushing gun control as a key legislative item before the elections, partly to drum up support for the election and partly to shift focus from a slew of scandals that had plagued him and some of his top administration officials.
