Friday Feb. 1, 2013
Screen grab from Elkhart County Sheriff Brad Rogers’ appearance on the CNN program “Anderson Cooper 360″
Below is the transcript of Elkhart County Sheriff Brad Rogers’ comments Thursday night from the CNN program “Anderson Cooper 360,” hosted by journalist Anderson Cooper. Look here and here for blogs from Thursday on Rogers’ appearance.
Also included below is the rebuttal to Rogers from CNN legal analyst Jeff Toobin. The issue was gun control:
COOPER: All right. I want to bring in Sheriff Brad Rogers who’s also joining us here. Sheriff is on the other side. He’s from Elkhart County, Indiana.
You made headlines recently when you said, you know, that folks in your area were concerned about people — government coming and confiscating their guns and that you would not uphold any law that you felt was unconstitutional that was passed.
Do you believe — and you believe it’s a state’s rights issue. Do you believe the federal government has any right to any form of gun control?
SHERIFF BRAD ROGERS, ELKHART COUNTY, INDIANA: No, I do not believe so. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly spells out what the federal government should be — is authorized to do. And everything else goes back to the state. It’s reserved for the states to mandate that.
In Indiana where I’m from, the Indiana Constitution spells it out even further. In Article 1, Section 32, it says, that people shall have a right to arm themselves to defend themselves and the state. So, you know, even if this — you know, even if it’s taken up by the state, they are restricted usually by their own constitution.
COOPER: Jeff, just from a legal analyst standpoint, what do you make of that?
(APPLAUSE)
TOOBIN: I think that’s just factually wrong. The –
(APPLAUSE)
The federal government is supreme — is supreme in this. There is a supremacy clause in the Constitution. If there’s a conflict between state law and federal law, the federal government wins. However, the federal government does have to abide by the Second Amendment, too. So the question, there is no doubt that the federal government has the right to engage in some sort of gun control. The question is, what can they ban? They cannot ban handguns.
We know that from the Supreme Court. But can they ban assault weapons? Can they ban tanks? Can they ban stinger missiles? You bet they can. And they do, and so that much we know is that the federal government can ban certain weapons, but they can’t ban all weapons.
Rogers flew out to Washington D.C. Thursday morning to appear on the program, titled “Guns Under Fire” and taped at George Washington University. The Elkhart County Sheriff was asked to attend to express the pro-gun rights stance. He returned late Thursday night and was back in Elkhart County today, Friday.
Thursday’s show was an hour-long program and Rogers appeared only in the above-quoted snippet, which I pulled from the transcript of the show on the CNN website (look here).
Rogers had mixed feelings about his appearance (look here).
Tim Vandenack is a reporter at the Elkhart Truth newspaper in Elkhart, Ind., www.etruth.com. He can be reached at tvandenack@etruth.com or 574-296-5884. Visit him/subscribe to him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter at @timvandenack.
