In the United States, the widespread availability of firearms contribute to a culture of violence, high rates of murder and assault, and mass shooting events. While media narratives largely point to failures to reform gun laws at the national level, the enforcement of firearm laws would actually fall on local law enforcement leaders. We focus on county sheriffs, who are law enforcement leaders elected via popular vote across the United States. This group also supports gun rights in a variety of ways, including via symbolic stances and refusals to enforce state-level gun control laws. We examine sheriff’s attitudes about guns as tool for understanding more about views of guns more generally. We first establish that sheriff’s views on guns are extreme: their preferences for gun rights are very different than the public, rank-and-file law enforcement, or people that live in their counties. Drawing on scholarship about gun attitudes in the general US population, we develop hypotheses about the role of place, politics, and individual characteristics of sheriffs. We assess sheriffs’ attitudinal support for gun rights from two original surveys (conducted a decade apart, each with more than 500 respondents) of sheriffs. We compliment the survey data with observational data on sheriffs’ support for gun rights via public statements opposing gun control efforts at the national level and the creation of second amendment sanctuary counties. Our research contributes to our understanding of gun control, elite behavior, and policy implementation.