By: Teresa Mull

An Indiana sheriff is standing up for the Second Amendment rights of his county residents by declaring his intention not to enforce unconstitutional laws.

The Daily Journal reports:

[Johnson County, Indiana Sheriff] Duane Burgess was asked by residents to clarify his stance on the issue, so he put his thoughts to paper in a legal document as a promise to county residents, he said.

“The people have rights and must be protected, and people must know where their elected sheriff and officials stand,” Burgess said. “People have the right to protect themselves and their property. They have the right to keep and bear arms.”

Locally, the ordinance declares, “Johnson County shall be a county in which the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms is deeply honored and protected against unlawful infringement; and that the Johnson County Commissioners and Johnson County Sheriff hereby declare their opposition to any law or regulation that unlawfully infringes upon the right to keep and bear arms, and it shall, therefore, be the policy of the Johnson County commissioners and the Johnson County sheriff not to utilize county resources in a manner that unlawfully infringes upon the right to keep and bear arms.”

Burgess’ stance on the Second Amendment is reminiscent of Colorado’s Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams, a staunch gun rights supporter who declared he disagrees with the state’s recently passed red flag gun confiscation law so much that he’s willing to go to jail rather than enforce it.

“If a court order comes down telling a sheriff or deputy that they have to serve a red flag order, they have a choice to make,” Sheriff Reams told Gunpowder Magazine. “They can either go down the road of violating someone’s constitutional rights, or violate the court order, which would result in them sitting in jail for a period of time. Frankly, I’ll choose the later.”

Teresa Mull ([email protected]) is editor of Gunpowder Magazine.