The Board of Commissioners for Lake County, Florida, unanimously passed a resolution declaring the county a “Second Amendment Sanctuary” in November 2019, making it Florida’s first county to do so. Other Florida counties have expressed interest in following suit. Lake County joins a handful of municipalities in Texas, Arizona, Illinois, and even Colorado and California that have made similar declarations over the last year. What does this mean for the citizens of Lake County and these other “Second Amendment Sanctuaries?”

Sanctuary Jurisdictions Seek to Protect Their Rights

The title of the declaration is meant to be a riff on “sanctuary cities” that protect immigrants against persecution by the federal government. In the eyes of the Second Amendment Sanctuary jurisdictions, they are protecting residents against an increasing threat of gun control measures such as assault weapons bans, red flag laws, and gun buyback programs proposed by Democratic presidential candidates and gun control activists. Lake County officials and their supporters claim existing laws already violate their Second Amendment rights, and that new proposed legislation would go much further in doing so.

For example, Colorado’s “red flag” laws allow family, household members, and law enforcement to petition a court to temporarily take guns away from an individual deemed to have a significant risk of hurting themselves or others by having a firearm. Gun rights activists see such laws as a slippery slope towards state and federal governments going after wholesale civilian disarmament; they argue that even laws currently enacted raise due process concerns.

Per the Lake County resolution, the federal government “cannot compel law enforcement officers to enforce federal laws as it would increase the power of the federal government far beyond that which the constitution intended.”

Gun Control Proponents Don’t See the Need

Proponents of gun control legislation take issue with the idea that any gun control legislation is a de facto violation of the Second Amendment. They argue that common-sense gun control measures such as banning assault rifles or implementing background checks allow people to still own firearms in accordance with their constitutional rights, but serve to limit the danger of guns.

No proposed legislation on the books or court decision approaches the civilian disarmament that sanctuary jurisdictions fear, according to gun control proponents. They note that there is no federal law that currently requires confiscation of firearms. The Supreme Court held that citizens have the right to bear arms for legal purposes as recently as 2008 in D.C. v. Heller.

Gun control activists point to the rash of mass shootings in the past few years, including in Florida, as proof that stricter gun control measures are needed: Parkland, Florida, saw 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018; a shooter killed five people at the Fort Lauderdale airport in 2017; and 49 people were killed by a gunman at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016.

Will These Sanctuaries Have an Effect? Are They Legal?

The sanctuaries claim the right to defy federal gun control legislation that they believe is violative of their citizens’ rights. It is unclear what these jurisdictions can actually do as a practical matter, however. Local police departments can use their discretion when it comes to enforcing federal laws, but that may be the extent of the effect of these resolutions.

State and local governments do not have the power to wholesale reject federal law, according to the principles of federal preemption. Moreover, Florida state law makes clear that only the state can make laws regarding firearms, limiting the power of county and city legislatures on gun control matters. Gun control activists claim that these sanctuary resolutions are more symbolic than practical, intended to make a political statement rather than carry true legal weight.

Second Amendment Sanctuary status has not yet been fully tested in the courts, and what effect, if any, the resolutions will have on gun control laws is still unclear. If cities and counties across the country start openly defying state and federal law, we are likely to see significant court battles going to the heart of the scope of constitutional rights.