"This bill was about drawing a line in the sand. It was about ensuring that if the federal government chooses to pursue a path of unconstitutional firearm restrictions, they must do so without the help of Wyoming's resources."

That's the crux of the whole SAPA debate nationwide. Sanctuary status without enforcement teeth is essentially a strongly worded letter. The civil lawsuit provisions were what gave individual gun owners standing to actually do something when the state crossed its own line.

The veto reasoning is where this gets worth digging into. Gordon cited Printz v. United States as making the bill redundant — but Printz only stops the feds from conscripting state officers. It doesn't stop Wyoming officers from volunteering their resources to federal operations. SAPA was aimed at exactly that voluntary participation, and the governor's letter conflated the two. That's either a misread or a convenient one.

The cartel and smuggling argument fares even worse. The bill's text used the word "solely" and explicitly excluded anyone not lawfully present in the US. Bringing up cross-border smuggling as a reason to veto it is like refusing to post speed limit signs because someone might still speed.

Worth noting: roughly three-quarters of the Wyoming Legislature passed SF0101. That's not a close vote. When that kind of supermajority runs into a single veto, the resistance isn't coming from the voters — it's coming from institutional law enforcement that doesn't want anything complicating their federal working relationships. That's a real political force, and it rarely shows up in the headline.

HB0096 dropping the carry age to 18 and HB0098 making Red Flag enforcement a state crime aren't nothing — any Wyoming officer now has criminal exposure for participating in a confiscation order. That's the kind of provision that actually changes behavior on the ground.

For those of us watching these sanctuary frameworks develop across the West: how much does the enforcement mechanism matter to you, or is the symbolic/legal posture of sanctuary status enough on its own?

Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett