There is something deeply backward about a state that works overtime to disarm its own citizens while moving to arm non-citizens with badges, guns, and the power to arrest the very people whose rights it keeps trying to crush.
Across the country, anti-gun states have spent years treating the law-abiding American citizen as the problem. These are the same states that push magazine bans, “assault weapon” bans, carry restrictions, waiting periods, permitting schemes, and every other obstacle they can dream up to make it harder for ordinary Americans to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.
At the same time, some of those very same jurisdictions have moved to let certain non-citizens serve as police officers, so long as they have federal work authorization and can meet the state’s requirements. Illinois changed its law to allow certain non-citizens to become police officers and deputy sheriffs, and New Mexico enacted a similar change in 2025. Think about that for a second.
The law-abiding American citizen is treated with suspicion for wanting to own a rifle, carry a handgun, or defend his family. But a state government that does not trust its own people with freedom suddenly has no problem trusting a non-citizen with a badge, a firearm, arrest powers, and the authority of the state.
That tells you everything you need to know about the mindset behind modern gun control.
It must also be noted that major federal law enforcement agencies still require U.S. citizenship for core police and investigative roles. So why are anti-gun states moving in the opposite direction?
Why, then, should the requirement be relaxed for those who seek employment as police officers in the states?
If non-citizens can carry a gun and if they have the power of arrest over citizens, then the bright line that exists between citizens and non-citizens becomes blurred and eventually shattered.
The idea that some states would grant police power to a non-citizen is foolish, for the same reasons non-citizens cannot serve as police officers in the federal government. Why would Blue-State Progressive Governors suddenly be so willing to arm non-citizens, ostensibly to fight crime, and yet frustrate if not curtail the exercise of the right to armed self-defense of actual citizens?
More to the point, if, as is the case, the problem of increasing criminal violence in a community is due to a state leadership’s obsequious attitude and conduct toward the criminal element responsible for that violence, then what is to be gained by a mere numerical increase of police officers to a state’s police force?
What is gained, exactly, by widening state police authority while still treating the armed citizen as the real threat?
When a state fills its police ranks with non-citizens while insisting ordinary citizens cannot be trusted with firearms, it has already lost the plot. At that point, it is not building public confidence. It is fueling justified anger from a citizen population that sees its own rights restricted while the government arms non-citizens and gives them the power to arrest Americans.
This is where the anti-gun narrative really starts to fall apart. The same political class that treats the armed citizen as a danger to society is often forced to ignore the reality that ordinary Americans are not the problem. In fact, law-abiding armed citizens have repeatedly shown that they can and do act to protect themselves and others when violence breaks out. That makes the state’s hostility toward armed self-defense even harder to justify, especially when those same officials are willing to expand armed government authority in other hands.
This practice is not only audacious and self-defeating but also bespeaks contempt for the people to whom government owes an obligation to serve—the American citizenry.
If there are shortages of Police Officers, then why are some Progressive State Governors, such as Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, so quick to arm and give a badge to non-citizens, and, simultaneously, to frustrate American citizens’ right to keep and bear arms for personal self-defense?
It goes back to “control” and to Progressive-Marxist suspicion of “The Common Man”—i.e., the Citizen of the United States—and the refusal to acknowledge or even comprehend the concept of ‘Personal Safety’ as the citizens’ fundamental right.
“Blue” States adamantly refuse to accommodate “Armed Personal Safety.” It doesn’t exist for them. Still, they should accommodate the Armed Citizen if they were serious about dealing effectively with rising criminal violence in their jurisdictions.
The citizen’s exercise of “Armed Personal Safety” is not incompatible with, does not clash with, and does not undermine the state’s role in providing for “Public Safety.” Rather, the Armed Citizen complements the state’s role in providing “Public Safety” through the state’s use of its “Police Power.”
Blue states need the Armed Citizen. In practice, these states do an extremely poor job of providing Public Safety due to misplaced priorities or a misunderstanding of what policing in our Country is about.
Birthright Citizenship Directly Impacts the Second Amendment
ROGER J. KATZ, ATTORNEY AT LAW
Roger is an attorney licensed to practice law in Ohio and Arizona, and he is CEO of Arbalest Group, LLC.
He is a graduate from Cleveland State University, Cleveland Marshall College of Law, and was an Editor of Law Review, and he has earned a Master of Public Administration Degree from Cleveland State University. Roger also holds several degrees from The Ohio State University: a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy, a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, and a Bachelor of Science in Education degree in Secondary English Education.
Roger has worked as a high school English teacher and as a university administrative assistant. On earning a law degree he worked for several years as a Trademarks Examining Attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Washington D.C., and later worked as an attorney for a boutique intellectual property law firm in New York City.
Roger’s goal, working full-time on the Arbalest Quarrel website, involves preparing comprehensive and detailed analyses of case law pertaining to First and Second Amendment issues, and analyses of Federal and State laws and bills impacting the Bill of Rights, generally, and the Second Amendment, particularly.
Roger takes as axiomatic that, to maintain a free Constitutional Republic, our Bill of Rights must be preserved. If the latter falls, the former falls.
