Sheriff Turned Dem Gov. Candidate Loses Gun and All Credibility on Gun Control
The citizenry should be able to expect law enforcement officials to handle their own weapons responsibly.
Such is apparently not the case with former Dallas Country Sheriff Lupe Valdez, now the Democrat gubernatorial candidate for the state of Texas.
Valdez’s platform includes gun control measures such as universal background checks for gun purchasers. She also opposes open carry laws and was against allowing students and faculty to be armed while on college campuses in the Lone Star State.
Because of these stances, she has garnered praise and an endorsement from former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona.
Giffords, who suffered a permanent brain injury from an attempt made on her life by a deranged gun owner in 2011, claims that Valdez will keep guns from “ending up in the wrong hands.”
But a weapon that Valdez got on loan from the sheriff’s office when she was in office could potentially have been “in the wrong hands” since at least December, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Valdez was issued the weapon in October 2011, the Star Telegram reported. She left office December to run for governor. According to the Star Telegram, “when she resigned from the sheriff’s department on Dec. 31, it was discovered that the Berretta had not been returned to the gun range.”
The gun, a 9mm Beretta, is the kind of weapon Lupez decries on the campaign trail.
Her opponent, Greg Abbott, the current governor of Texas, makes the credible argument that if she can’t keep track of her gun, she has no business in political office:
https://twitter.com/AbbottCampaign/status/1029732297078173697
This ineptitude leaves the Valdez campaign with limited spin. The only defense spokesman Juan Bautista Dominguez can muster is that Valdez is attempting to aid investigators to “locate the firearm.”
According to the Dallas Morning News, Dominguez admitted that “this weapon could have been stolen or misplaced during Sheriff Valdez’s moving transition” to gubernatorial candidate.
Valdez may have taken liberal hypocrisy on guns to a new level.
The usual hypocrisy exhibited by gun-control celebrities is that they either own the guns they want banned, or employ private security forces with the same weapons.
As bad as that is, for a law enforcement officer who pushes for greater gun control, losing a weapon or having it stolen outright is even worse.
While entrusted as a sheriff to maintain “public safety,” Valdez may have endangered it instead.
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