Across the country we have seen Democrat-controlled states and cities announcing themselves as "sanctuaries" for immigrants in the opposition to policies handed down from the Trump administration. Last week, a county in Illinois voted to become a "sanctuary county"of its own, but this time the battle is over gun control measures that may be passed by their state government.
As the USA Today reports:
The Effingham County Board approved the resolution 8-1 on Monday. Board members said they felt it was necessary to "take a stand" against gun control efforts in the Illinois legislature.
Effingham County State's Attorney Bryan Kibler told Fox News that they decided to "flip the script" and "make this a sanctuary county like they would for undocumented immigrants."
This is precisely how political self-determination should look like. Instead of leaving it up to legislators in an isolated capital dictate laws on a country as large and diverse as the United States, we are all better off having decisions be left at political units closer to the citizens themselves. Just as states should be able to nullify bad Federal policies, local governments should opt to nullify bad state law.
As Mises wrote in Liberalism:
[T]he right of self-determination...is not the right of self-determination of nations, but rather the right of self-determination of the inhabitants of every territory large enough to form an independent administrative unit. If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done.
Of course in order to check the political authority of larger entities, those trusted with enforcing the law must be willing to stand with their local community. Unfortunately in the case of Effingham County, it seems their sheriff isn't prepared to do so. Still, the increased willingness of state and local governments to question the wisdom and rules of larger government bodies is one of the more promising trends in American politics.
