Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.

The top Democrat in Virginia’s state Senate admitted he blocked pay raises for all of the state’s county sheriffs because of their support for gun rights.

Senate majority leader Dick Saslaw (R-Fairfax) told Republican Sen. Bill Stanley, who backed the pay increases, that sheriffs were being punished “because they came to our committees and said that they weren’t going to enforce our laws.”

Stanley wrote about Saslaw’s comments in a Facebook post – comments Saslaw later confirmed.

Stanley sought to hike pay for sheriffs because, he says, so many of them, particularly in Virginia’s more rural counties, are currently paid so little they qualify for food stamps.

For Saslaw, that was irrelevant. He told the Washington Post:

“All I said was a lot of people were upset that these people [local sheriffs] came in and said they weren’t going to enforce our laws. That’s all. That’s it,” Saslaw said.

Asked if he stood by his comments, Saslaw said, “I said it.”

Stanley said Saslaw’s comments “shocked him, and that Democrats had decided to punish “our local Sheriff’s Departments (by eliminating a pay raise for them), for their choice to protect and defend our citizens’ Second Amendment rights.”

“Democrats want to restrict a citizen’s right to protect themselves,” Staley said, “but won’t pay our sheriffs’ deputies to protect Virginians. Hypocrisy has a name.”

Image Credit: Craig from Richmond, Virginia`, United States [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]