Sheriff Joe Arpaio is one of those chief peace officers who regularly and vocally support defense of self and others by force of arms. In the run-up to Christmas, Arpaio has asked both open and concealed carriers to protect themselves and each other. From fox10Phoenix.com . . .

Surrounded by his posse, Sheriff Joe Arpaio asked armed citizens to help protect malls this holiday season. Arpaio says nearly 250,000 Arizonans carry concealed weapons and many more are carrying in the open.

“I’m asking for that group to make sure that if some violent activity occurs that they take action to defend themselves, and also the people around them until law enforcement shows up,” said Arpaio.

In 2009, Arpaio voiced support of Constitutional or ‘permitless’ carry. From azcentral.com:

But Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he would support the bill, saying carriers of concealed weapons should not face permit requirements when people who carry their weapons openly do not.

“A gun is a gun, whether it’s concealed or not,” Arpaio said.

In 1997, Sheriff Arpaio raffled off an AR-15 that had been grandfathered in under the then recent Clinton ban on “assault weapons.” From the News-Herald, 24 December, 1997.

I hope that you or someone on you(r) behalf at Handgun Control Inc. is not using this single raffle (f)or a legal firearm and the national notoriety of this sheriff to pursue his or her own anti-gun agenda throughout the United States.”

Sheriff Arpaio has been a proponent of an armed citizenry for a long time. He was first elected in 1992, before Arizona allowed for a concealed carry permit, and long before the state instituted Constitutional or permitless carry. [Note: Arizona always had open carry. Constitutional carry was supposed to be protected in the State Constitution, but legislators and the courts had chipped away at that right from the beginning of statehood in 1912.] Arpaio’s unabashed support for defense of self and others in this holiday season deserves recognition. Not bad for the former head of the DEA in Arizona.

©2015 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
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42 COMMENTS

  1. Sheriff Joe reminds me of Winston Churchill. He wasn’t always right, but he was always in there swinging. Don’t give Sheriff Joe a half million men to throw at Gallipolli and he’ll do right by us.

    • Hardly. Ottomans were ferocious warriors especially when defending homeland. Galipolli resulted in the death of thousands of invading Greek, Anzac & French soldiers.

        • outcome at gallipolli would have been quite different had the allied nations held a climate change conference prior. ottomans would have been seriously rebuked.

  2. I’d like to meet the Sheriff. Definitely one of the good guys. And understands “when seconds count ……”

    • Arpaio deserves a statue, and not posthumously. And if Obama deserves a Noble Peace Prize for the wrong reason, then Arpaio deserves one for the right one.

    • He is far from one of the good guys.
      There’s a popular joke that the ACLU counts to 10 like this: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, done.
      Arpaio has the exact opposite problem. He sees things like warrants and privacy protections as impediments. He’s firmly in the “if you’re innocent, you have nothing to hide/fear” crowd.

  3. This guy really? He’s about authoritarian as they come, just because he is pro gun doesn’t mean he should be celebrated…. He is an ass when it comes to most other of the other BoR.

    • He very strongly believes that people who possess a leaf that he doesn’t like should be kidnapped and thrown into a cage. Anyone who thinks this way is fundamentally a bad person.

        • He’s correct on 2A issues, but outside that he’s a Shitstain on law enforcement.
          He’s cost the taxpayers millions in lawsuits over his unconstitutional treatment of prisoners and minorities… He’s proud that his jails are “Places of Punishment”, despite that the majority of his prisoners have yet to go to trial. ie: constitutionally not guilty.
          Hero? Not by any rational definition.

      • He very strongly believes in whatever is polling well in his county. He was for illegal aliens before he was against them. He was against The Minutemen before he was for them. He’s all about fiscal responsibility and keeping costs down, and he has not one, not two but THREE publicists on his payroll to tell you about the $1,000 he saved by getting rid of the mustard packets that he was serving at his jail. He’ll buy a .50 M2, not because he thinks he’s going to need it, but because he wants to tout himself as the first sheriff with a crew served weapon. When Phoenix got its light rail train the train was in the news more than he was, so his publicists came up with the bright idea to release a story about how he was saving money on parking by using the train to haul inmates to the airport, but it came out later that he had a few free parking spaces at the airport, so there was no savings, he just couldn’t stand being upstaged by a train. All of his positions come down to sticking his finger up to the wind and feeling which way the wind is blowing, which is great when the wind is blowing your way, but as more and more Californians and New Yorkers come to AZ you can expect him to modify his positions accordingly. He needs to retire, and then decline to draw a pension as his final act of conservatism.

        • So, IOW, he is exactly, 100%, like every other democratically elected politician who has ever held any office of significance. In any state and any country, anywhere. Including Jefferson, who at least had the sense to realize he was scum like the rest of them, and needed to be restricted from doing too much.

        • He’s at the top of the class of democratically elected politicians I guess. There are sheriffs who are elected and then just go about their business without glorifying themselves, but I can’t name any, because sheriffs who just quietly go about their business are not well known…because they just quietly go about their business without making spectacles of themselves. This guy is basically just a shameless megalomaniacal publicity whore who goes around spending a dollar to let everyone know about the dime he saved. He’s an assclown.

    • Exactly. He may look good in a few press blurbs, but once you know what they guy really does, you’ll want to tar and feather him.

      I live in PHX for about 6 months, and Arpaio is one hell of a polarizer. I heard way too many accounts of the outrageous crap he pulls, to be supportive of him in any way. Not to mention costing the taxpayers many millions in lost lawsuits.

      • I’m sure he’s a scumbag (he wouldn’t be elected otherwise), but it’s the lawyers, judges and others in that racket who are costing taxpayers lawsuit money.

    • Do you have any proof he or his deputies treat them any differently, or is this a simple ad hominem attack?

      • The man lost his county one of the largest civil rights lawsuits on the basis of racial or ethnic discrimination in American history, because he kept arresting latinos for looking like illegal immigrants.

    • Perhaps you can ask the many black and Hispanic deputies that work for him. I have not heard of an EEOC complaint against him by his employees.
      It is a common tactic to accuse white people of racism. Your cop hatred is showing.

  6. Sherrif Joe and his deputies a good people. He does his job. His racist reputation is bullshit. He upholds the law, period. I moved here from MD 19 years ago and havn’t met a racist. Plenty in MD though. AZ is like 40% hispanic. Everyone has freinds and family members who are at least part hispanic. Even the legal hispanics I know don’t want the illegals here, it drives down wages.

    He’s a true Lawman.

    • F wikipedia. I’m sure whoever wrote his profile leans to the left. It all has to be put into context. He stands up against the federal government. The feds and the left hate him, thats all the more reason to support him. And most arizonians feel the same way. Thats why he keeps getting reelected over and over again.

      • So because the left and Feds hate him we should love him? Yeah No I support Civil Liberties and he sure as Hell doesn’t. So he’s Pro-Gun so what? He shits on the rest of the Bill of Rights.

      • Stands up to the feds? HE IS A FED!!! He’s more Fed than anything else. He rode into town on his Fed horse and carpetbagged his way into a job, and he spends most of his time attention whoring. He even ran campaign ads IN A YEAR WHEN HE WASN’T EVEN UP FOR REELECTION, just because he was getting tired of turning on TV and not hearing about himself.

      • >pissed off the feds are intruding on his fiefdom
        >HURR DURR he must be a good guy

        When will people realize all government power struggles are between scumbags?

  8. My hometown is very rich in history, but every time I see Sherrif Joe mentioned it makes me proud to be from Springfield, MA! Although I don’t think they’ll be building any statues for him here.

  9. I am curious:

    Are the Sheriff’s deputies trained to distinguish between bad and good guys upon arriving at the scene?

    How will/can the good guys who present the first line of resistance demarcate themselves so they don’t get shot by the LEOs?

  10. I admit I don’t know jack about Joe. But I like his plan. Better than MY sheriff-Tom Dart in Cook Co.,IL. Scum of the earth…

    • That ain’t no shit. Makes me kinda proud I live downstate. You know, where all the farmers and hayseeds live.

  12. Yeah we can certainly find better people to build statues for. I only need to throw a rock. He’s like the Donald Trump of sheriffs.

  14. This is Donald Trump at the local level. If he thought he’d get support from his base by advocating gun confiscation then he’d be all over it.

  15. Just surprised that he hasn’t had an “accident” after investigating O’s birth certificate, and concluding that it was
    fake.

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