A famous gun control advocate organization wants an Oregon sheriff to resign, questioning his ability to conduct a fair investigation into last week’s mass shootings at a community college there, The Oregonian reported on its OregonLive.com website.
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Three days before that letter was released, Hanlin linked his personal Facebook page to a YouTube video that suggested that the shootings at Sandy Hook – and the attacks of September 11, 2001 – might have been staged by the federal government to provide a pretext for “disarming the public” through gun control legislation.
Ethan Hurley, 7, top right, prays with a church group at a makeshift memorial near Snyder Hall at Um …
The group’s president, Dan Gross, said that “Sheriff John Hanlin posited a simple question – ‘Who can we trust anymore?’ He has made clear to Oregonians that it surely is not him”.
In addition to taking issue with Hanlin’s pro-gun letter to Biden, Gross pointed to a Facebook post Hanlin shared about the school shooting in Sandy Hook days after the 2013 event.
“The sheriff charged with enforcing the law has openly vowed to break it”, Gross said.
Mr Hanlin said on Friday that his views on gun control are not relevant to the case.
“We are calling on John Hanlin not only to be replaced as the lead investigator, but also to be immediately removed as sheriff”, Gross told reporters.
“He’s trying to protect everybody’s Second Amendment rights”, said Dennis Harper, who works at an auto parts store near the community college.
At the close of a recently-finished press conference, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin expressed his “most honest appreciation to those most directly touched by this incident”.
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Another local, Carolyn Kellim, who runs a gun shop out of her home, proudly described Douglas County as “hunting country”, adding that gun control would be “the worst thing in the world that can happen”. He enjoys hunting, fishing and riding his motorcycle through the county’s rural areas, according to his official biography.
