By Scott Greer
In Sanford, Fla., there will be no more guns for neighborhood-watch volunteers.
The city's police department announced the volunteers will no longer be allowed to carry handguns, even if they are licensed, while patrolling their communities.
A spokesman for the Sanford Police Department said police never encourage volunteers to carry firearms and strongly discourage the practice in neighborhood-watch training.
The Florida town was the site of the shooting of Trayvon Martin by neighborhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in July of second-degree murder.
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Jack Cashill, author of the just-released book "If I Had a Son: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman," thinks it's a bad policy that will only hurt Sanford.
"It's a punitive measure based on bad information and should serve the effect of discouraging anyone from joining a neighborhood watch program," Cashill told WND.
Cashill believes that the current police chief, Cecil Smith, who enacted the new rule, benefited directly from the "black grievance industry's" reaction to the case. His predecessor, Bill Lee, was fired for not initially arresting Zimmerman. The author said the pressure from the "black grievance industry" is the source for the change in the rules.
"The police chief, who owes his job to the political pressure brought to bear on this case, misunderstands the neighborhood watch program and he misunderstands what had happened on Feb. 12, 2012," Cashill said.
Under the police chief's guidelines, Zimmerman, upon seeing someone suspicious, "would've had to go home and disarm himself and then make the call," Cashill observed.
The noted journalist believes there are clear differences between the two police chiefs and how they viewed their position.
"The preceding police chief knew that his chief responsibility was to protect the citizens of Sanford, Fla. – this police chief’s first responsibility seems to be to appease the grievance industry," Cashill said.
Cashill also believes the rule violates the right of Sanford's citizens to defend themselves.
"I have real constitutional problems with the whole setup, and I also have problems with the notion that a police department should preempt a citizen's right to self-defense," Cashill said.
He worried that the rule will only help criminals and hurt a town that is already struggling with a growing crime problem.
"If I Had A Son" tells how for the first time in the history of American jurisprudence, a state government, the U.S. Department of Justice, the White House, the major media, the entertainment industry and the vestiges of the civil rights movement conspired to put an innocent man in prison for the rest of his life.
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