Sheriff Richard Mack, Sheriff Printz
A Tale of Two Courageous County Sheriffs




By Ron Ewart Sunday, March 22, 2009

All around us, the power of the federal government is manifested by hundreds of presidential executive orders, thousands of un-read legislation emanating from the U. S. Congress and millions of bureaucratic rules, regulations, restrictions and ordinances, issuing forth from the government’s massive bureaucracy ..... laws, rules, regulations, restrictions and ordinances that in most cases, bear no resemblance to constitutional law, much less constitutional authority. These people don’t seem to care about constitutional law or constitutional authority, they just do it, because they can and it takes an alert citizenry to challenge them.


How do you fight such a monster? The following story depicts one way.

No doubt all of us over 45 will remember that infamous day in March of 1981, when a love-struck John Hinkley tried to assassinate President Reagan, but was only successful in wounding him. At the same time, Hinkley’s bullets also entered the body of James Brady, Reagan’s Press Secretary, leaving him severely injured and in a wheel chair for life. Sara Brady, James’ wife, was instrumental in pushing for the passage of the original Brady Bill, requiring background checks for hand gun purchasers. President Clinton signed the Brady Bill into law in 1993.

The impact of the Brady bill was to force the chief law enforcement officer of each county in the United States to be responsible for conducting the background checks of each hand gun purchaser. As a result, over 3,000 lawsuits were brought against the government in state courts objecting to the new law. Seven of those lawsuits were from county sheriffs who had to bear the burden of background checks, without so much as a farthing being offered from the federal government to pay for the sheriff’s troubles.

A couple of those lawsuits were by a sheriff in Arizona, Sheriff Richard Mack and another in Montana, Sheriff Printz. Sheriff Mack filed his case on the same day that the Brady bill went into effect, February 28, 1994. As the cases wound their way through the lower courts, the Mack and Printz cases made it to the 9th circuit. A case by a Texas sheriff made it to the 5th Circuit Court. The decision from the 9th circuit court ruled that the Brady Bill was constitutional. The 5th Circuit Court ruled just the opposite, making it virtually impossible for the U. S. Supreme Court to ignore the case.

On December 4, 1996, the U. S. Supreme Court agreed to review the two cases from the 5th and 9th circuit courts, to adjudicate the different outcomes. Ultimately, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled against the 9th Circuit Court (no surprise there) and for the 5th Circuit in a 5 to 4 decision. As did the recent decision by the U. S. Supreme Court regarding the right to keep and bear arms belonging to each citizen of the United States, the opinion of the majority of the Supreme Court in the Mack/Printz decision, poked a very large “fingerâ€