City council debates banning concealed weapons from "recreational facilities" | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    As scheduled, the Washington City Council, and councilman Moultrie, discussed the Police Chief's recommendation that people with valid concealed handgun permits be prohibited from having those weapons in a list of "recreational facilities" within the city. Click here to review our earlier story on the proposal.

    We'll leave it to the video below to convey what happened at Monday's meeting, but we would suggest that as you watch the video that you keep in mind a couple of salient points.

    First, the new law they are referring to was explained in the General Assembly as intended to make the concealed carry law more uniform across the state. As it is now, many municipalities have different restrictions and it is virtually impossible for a person with a legal, legitimate concealed carry permit to know where they can or cannot use that permit. The previous version of the law allowed municipalities to restrict the use of the permits in "parks." The legislature specifically deleted that provision. But the law provided that municipalities could restrict the permits in "recreational facilities." That provision was explained by the proponents as necessary to keep guns out of places where there were crowds.

    The second thing that we would suggest is that both the staff and council members appear to be very ill-informed about what the actual intent of the law is.

    The third thing we would point out to watch for is the justification offered for the new proposal. There is absolutely no mention of any data or any other evidence that the ordinance is needed to solve an actual problem. Manager Josh Kay explains that the reason for the proposal is to "bring the existing ordnance in line with the current law (as amended.)" But notice that nothing in the law requires that any municipality have such an ordinance in the first place. He makes a big deal out of improving the specificity of the ordinance. But mark our words, when the dust settles on this there will be more questions raised by "cleaning up" the old ordinance than answers that will come from the new ordinance. But what you will see in the discussion is a board with a "solution" looking for a problem to solve. They never document the problem. And as the attorney sitting there knows full well, if they enact an ordinance that restricts a fundamental constitutional right (Second Amendment) they must show they have a "compelling interest" in doing so, and the way they address that problem must be narrowly tailored to accomplish its purpose with the least intrusion into our rights as practicable. Watch for that compelling reason in the video.

    One other sidenote. Councilman Bobby Roberson opined that he wanted to ban Tasers. He did so because he believes the stun guns are deadly weapons. But the law of concealed carry does not require a permit to carry a Taser, concealed or open. They are not considered deadly weapons. The reason they are not considered deadly weapons is opposition from law enforcement people because they don't want the same restrictions applied to stun guns as are applied to firearms because their use would be much more severely restricted....and the company that makes them would have increased liability.

    As you will see in the video, the Council took the proposal under advisement, directing the staff to do more research and bring back a draft of a specific proposed amendment to the city ordinance. That process will include a public hearing to be announced at a later date.

    Finally, the citizen who spoke was Mr. Barry Gutfield.

    Here's the discussion in Monday's meeting:

    Commentary

    If you ever wanted an example of overreaching government intrusion into our personal liberties, here is a good one. Essentially, what you have here are government officials who took an oath to support and defend the constitution being quick to infringe on our Second Amendment rights and for no legitimate reason other than some abstract idea that there is a problem they have a compelling interest in addressing. They have not one iota of evidence in this discussion that there is even a problem, much less one serious enough to deprive a citizen of their constitutional right to bear arms.



    Hopefully, Doug Mercer's appeal to study this thing will produce an acceptable outcome.