Sheriff Refuses To Meet With Sarasota Anti-Gun Violence Group

SARASOTA COUNTY, FL — Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman has refused to meet with the Sarasota chapter of Brady, a gun control and anti-gun violence group.

The Gun Writer, a pro-gun newsletter published by former Herald-Tribune investigative reporter Lee Williams, shared a letter penned by the sheriff turning down the organization’s request for a meeting Friday.

In an email to Patch, Carol Conyne Rescigno, president of Brady’s Sarasota chapter, confirmed the group received the emailed letter from Hoffman.

In the letter, Hoffman said he was familiar with the group’s gun control platform and he has “fundamental differences regarding nearly every objective of Brady.”

The Brady group was founded by Jim Brady, a gun owner, Republican and President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, who was shot in the head during the Reagan assassination attempt. The organization lobbies for less gun violence, enhanced background checks for gun purchases, extreme risk protective orders to temporarily remove guns from people in crisis, and other measures.

The sheriff added, “I am a member of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the 2nd Amendment Foundation, in addition to being a Life Member of the NRA. I have been a law enforcement officer in this state for over 32 years, eight years of which were as an Assistant State Attorney, and I am satisfied that the laws on the books in Florida sufficiently protect this community from gun violence.”

Part 1 crimes, including gun crimes, have seen a 52 percent reduction in Sarasota County over the past decade, Hoffman said.

“We made these strides without infringing on our citizen’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms, more succinctly stated, we went after criminals, not lawful gun owners. ‘Gun safety’ is often cloaked in language that essentially bans certain guns, ammunition or magazine capacities while criticizing award winning programs like Eddie Eagle. Calling certain firearms ‘weapons of war’ and ‘assault weapons’ while limiting how many rounds a citizen can carry for self-protection or creating gun registries is a non-starter for me,” he said.

Conyne Rescigno said Brady received the letter from Hoffman Friday.

“We tried to meet with the sheriff via a few…phone requests for a few months. We meet with most elected officials, candidates and others who are in a position to help the people of Sarasota. Seldom have we been turned down (we met with his predecessor, Sheriff (Tom) Knight, a few years ago). Our goal is always to let them know Sarasota has a Brady chapter and to see if there are ways we can work together,” she said.

Kaitlyn Perez, community affairs director for the sheriff’s office, said the Brady chapter reached out to the sheriff’s office twice in recent weeks requesting a meeting with Hoffman.

“With an anti-Second Amendment platform that focuses on federal gun regulation, the Sheriff respectfully declined as he did not see anything productive coming from a meeting. He authored an email Friday around 11 a.m. There is no specific policy against meeting with groups,” she said in an email to Patch.

Hoffman has recently been under fire for speaking at three events organized by the Sarasota Patriots for Trump while campaigning to become sheriff in 2019 and 2020. At these events, he spoke alongside followers of the online conspiracy theory site QAnon and other fringe groups.

Perez told Patch that the sheriff didn’t know what QAnon was at the time and didn’t learn about the far-right movement, which is considered a domestic terror threat by the FBI, until February of this year.

She also said that since he didn't have a large campaign team, he didn’t have the resources to research every organization that invited him to speak.