Why sheriffs tend to be more supportive of gun rights than police chiefs are

A Seattle area blog laments the unlikelihood of forcible citizen disarmament advocates in Washington succeeding in exploiting a recent spike in murders of law enforcement officers in furtherance of the gun ban agenda:

You would think that if ever there was a political climate favorable for gun control legislation, it would be here. With the state reeling from the third police killing in two months, legislators surely feel the need to do something. A proposed assault weapons ban, to be introduced in the coming legislative session, would seem like a place to start.

Yet only one week after Washington CeaseFire held a press conference to announce the planned bill, its prospects look dim. "Frustrating, that would be the word," CeaseFire president Ralph Fascitelli says, speaking of the reaction he's getting from key politicians as he lobbies for the proposal.

I won't go into much detail about Nina Shapiro's (Nina is apparently an enthusiastic hater of the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms, apparently)--there's very little there beyond "People ('Only Ones,' no less, in this case) are being killed--ban some guns--quick! Nothing, in other words, we haven't seen a thousand times before.

Toward the end, though, we do encounter something I find interesting. Washington Governor Christine Gregoire is apparently seeking guidance from various police groups before articulating her own stance on banning so-called "assault weapons," and the executive director of one of those organizations made a penetrating observation (my emphasis added):

One of those groups is the Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs, which has decided not to take a position on the proposed bill. Don Pierce, the organization's executive director, says that members expressed mixed feelings at a meeting in November, with sheriffs trending more critical of gun control than police chiefs. Why? "They're elected," he explains.

Have you noticed that one rarely sees or hears the mission of police as being "to protect and serve"? It seems to me that those police chiefs who support restrictive gun laws--because they know that (being appointed, rather than elected) they can afford to ignore the will of the people--are quite right to have backed away from claiming to uphold that motto.