Nevada Police Union Calls Fiore ‘Embarrassment’ For Gun Comments

Nevada’s largest police union has come out against Assemblywoman Michele Fiore (R) for her recent suggestion that citizens can take aim at law enforcement officers so long as police point their weapons first.

“Ms. Fiore, we no longer see you as a passionate advocate for your Second Amendment rights, which we support,” Nevada Association of Public Safety Officers Executive Director Rick McCann wrote in a letter to her office. “Rather, these comments were utterly irresponsible, an embarrassment to your District and our State, and they continue to demonstrate why you are unqualified to hold the position of United States Congresswoman.”

Fiore, a controversial advocate for firearm use who has called the Bureau of Land Management a “bureaucrat agency of terrorism,” is currently running for an open U.S. House seat in her state. Her role in brokering the end of the standoff by armed extremists at a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon earlier this year helped raise her national profile.

In an interview in late April, Fiore told KLAS-8 that she “would never ever point my firearm at anyone, including an officer of the law, unless they pointed their firearm at me.”

“Now once you point your firearm at me,” she continued, “I’m sorry, then it becomes self-defense. Whether you’re a stranger, a bad guy, or an officer, and you point your gun at me and you’re gonna shoot me and I have to decide whether it’s my life or your life, I choose my life.”

McCann called Fiore’s comments disrespectful to the “hard working men and women who put their lives on the line every day.”

“Your comments underscore your distortion of the Second Amendment and essentially advise your followers that they may point a firearm at law enforcement with impunity and without life or death consequences,” he wrote.

McCann noted in his letter that he had worked well with Fiore “on many occasions” during the 2015 legislative session.

h/t KTNV