It’s looks like there’s a movement among local sheriffs to refuse to enforce the new laws against guns. The Drudge Report has been all over the story. It linked to one dispatch, issued by the National Broadcasting Company, that quoted a warning by the sheriff at Collin County, Texas. “Neither I, nor any of my deputies, will participate in the enforcement of laws that violate our precious constitutional rights, including our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms,” the sheriff, Terrence Box, was quoted as saying. Drudge also linked to a story from the Columbia Broadcasting System, quoting the sheriff of Osage County, Missouri, Michael Dixon, as saying his office will not enforce any gun control proposals that President Obama passes “if,” as Columbia put it, “they violate the Constitution.”

The question that intrigues us is whether the responsibility of these sheriffs is any different from the responsibility of President Obama. They are both sworn to uphold the same Constitution. The fact is that the Constitution itself requires not only the president to swear to support the Constitution. It also requires that all members of Congress and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, “both of the United States and of the several States” shall “be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.” The question is whether the sheriffs have any more or less a responsibility than President Obama to refuse to enforce a law that they deem, in their considered judgment, unconstitutional.

Clearly Mr. Obama feels he has such a responsibility. He said as much in respect of the Defense of Marriage Act. In February 2011, the New York Times, reported that the President determined that the 1996 law, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages, is unconstitutional. It reported that the president “has directed the Justice Department to stop defending the law in court.” The top G-Man, Eric Holder, disclosed the decision in a letter to Congress. In an editorial, the New York Times congratulated the President. It called the law, which President Clinton signed, “deplorable.” It said Mr. Obama did “the right thing” and “scored Congress’s shabby violation of constitutional rights that supposedly protect all Americans.”

It is not our purpose here to support the Defense of Marriage Act, a law for which these columns did not plump. It is our purpose to remark on the responsibilities of the President and the sheriffs to support and defend the Constitution. And to note that the language the Times used is uncannily similar to the language the sheriffs are using in swinging behind the Bill of Rights. Sheriff Box said he would “not participate in the actions of misguided politicians who seek to impede our citizens’ right to all of the privileges afforded by our Constitution.” In Johnson County Missouri, Sheriff Charles M. Heiss said that any attempt to restrict Second Amendment rights through executive order “is unconstitutional and tantamount to an all-out assault on the United States Constitution.” It seems to us the sheriffs and the President might want to get together for one of the President’s famous beers.