Phoenix New Times,
November 5, 2019-
As Tucson voters decided today whether their city should become a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, Mohave County was still reveling in its move to become a sanctuary for an entirely different group: gun owners. The Board affirms its support of the Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, and declares Mohave County a Second Amendment Sanctuary County,” reads a resolution approved unanimously on November 4 by the Mohave County Board of Supervisors.
The move follows a recent trend across the southern and western United States for rural municipalities to reaffirm their support for gun rights by calling themselves “sanctuaries,” an apparent riffing on other cities’ decisions to become sanctuaries for immigrants. Needles, California, which hugs the western border of Arizona’s Mohave County, became a “sanctuary” for gun rights in July. Mohave County’s new resolution doesn’t appear to elicit any actual changes in law. If it did, that could be illegal, according to Gerry Hills, the founder of Arizonans for Gun Safety, who pointed out that state preemption law blocks cities or counties from making gun policies that are different from state law.