#2972: John Hanlin

John Hanlin has been the sheriff of Douglas County, Oregon, since 2008, which means that he was the sheriff in charge of investigating the 2015 shooting at Umpqua Community College that left nine people dead. In that context, media rightfully raised some concerns, because Hanlin had previously promoted Sandy Hook trutherism: In a (later removed) Facebook post, Hanlin posted a link to the video “Sandy Hook Shooting - Fully Exposed”, writing “This makes me wonder who we can trust anymore.” The video suggested that both 9/11 and the Sandy Hook shooting were part of a government conspiracy to take away people’s guns. At the same time, Hanlin wrote a letter to the government asserting that “Gun control is NOT the answer to preventing heinous crimes like school shootings” and pledged that he would not enforce new gun laws; in the aftermath of the Umpqua shooting, he merely asserted that “[n]ow is not an appropriate time to have those conversations”.

 

Now, Hanlin did later assert that the Sandy Hook massacre was not a government conspiracy. He still counts as a loon, however, and not only because he at one point entertained such silliness – for notice the standards he applies to judge which conversations are legimitate to have at what points. And yes, those standards are sufficient to qualify John Hanlin as a loon.

 

Hanlin is also associated with the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers and subscribes to the view that sheriffs are “the highest executive authority in a county and therefore constitutionally empowered to be able to keep federal agents out of the county”. He invoked claims like this in response e.g. to statewide COVID measures in 2020, both because of what he perceived to be medical reasons and because he viewed them as an unconstitutional infringement upon individual freedom, just like traffic laws (he didn’t mention that).

 

Diagnosis: Yes, this entry is centered around one error he made years ago and which he has later, half-heartedly, repudiated. But it was an error that reveals more than enough about what kind of mindset we are dealing with, and it is a profoundly disconcerting one.