“Experts” Blather And Yammer About North Carolina Constitutional Carry
BY Herschel Smith
7 years, 8 months ago
WFMY:
GREENSBORO, NC – A Cabarrus County lawmaker introduced a bill Wednesday that would allow North Carolinians to carry a concealed handgun without a permit.
North Carolina is an open carry state. The current concealed carry law in North Carolina requires an applicant to take and pass a safety and training course that involves the actual firing of handguns and understanding of North Carolina gun laws. Prior to 1995, it was illegal for someone to conceal carry at all.
After news of the proposed bill broke, hundreds on social media voiced their opinions on House Bill 69.
We took some of those recurring comments on Facebook to Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes and Gary Lewallen, a certified firearms instructor and former Archdale Police Chief.
Barnes is a pro-second amendment advocate but doesn’t agree with the proposed bill. Lewallen is also a pro-gun and pro-second amendment, and was more neutral on the bill, with limitations.
Comment: If it is legal to open carry without training or a permit, why can’t a person conceal carry without training or a permit?
BARNES: “The CCW class, the concealed carry class, teaches you what and when you can use your gun.”
Barnes added the law requires someone to tell law enforcement they have a concealed weapon should an officer approach them. He’s worried if the proposed bill passes, people would no longer have to tell police they had a gun hidden on their body or in their car.
LEWALLEN: “They need to be able to understand their rights to carry and conceal as well understand when to use deadly force. There should be no reason why we can’t have an eight-hour class on your basic firearms and your rights to carry and conceal in North Carolina.”
Both Barnes and Lewallen agreed, they would like to see training classes take place prior to someone purchasing a gun in any situation, whether to open or conceal carry.
Comment: You already go through a background check to buy a gun, so why be redundant? A permit to conceal carry makes zero sense and it makes it zero percent safer.
BARNES: “When you open carry everyone knows you are carrying and you can avoid that person. Someone can also see if that person is violating the law while open carrying, say, if they were to try and go into a location, such as a gun or store where they don’t want people armed.”
LEWALLEN: “It (open carrying) doesn’t prevent someone from calling the police or the sheriff and saying hey, I’ve got a person here and they’re making me feel uneasy, I’m in fear because of this gun on their side and they (police) have to come and investigate it.”
Well, there you go. If this is the best among the “experts” this journalist could come up with, that station ought to be shut down. As for the statement that “There should be no reason why we can’t have an eight-hour class on your basic firearms and your rights to carry and conceal in North Carolina,” hey, you don’t suppose that he stands to lose some business if constitutional carry passes in N.C., do you? All of those concealed handgun permit classes he teaches? I wonder how much he makes on all of that?
As for the awful Sheriff, this is just stunning. He ought to be teaching his deputies that everyone is assumed to be carrying, all of the time. Asking the question or waiting for someone to self identify is ridiculous and dangerous. You understand that, right? Only peaceable, law-aiding men and women will self-identify, whereas criminals will not, and this may lead the police into a false sense of security. The law cannot be trusted. If he isn’t teaching his cops that, he needs to be replaced with someone who has some common sense.
As for their idiotic comments on openly carrying, they are making this out to be something it isn’t. North Carolina is a “Gold-Star” traditional open carry state. I openly carry all of the time and have never had any problem from citizens or LEOs. Women and children do not go running and screaming, and I’ve had many people stop me and chat about it. Sending deputies out to “investigate” open carriers is a silly waste of time. He ought to be telling the dispatchers to ask the caller what law is being broken. “Ma’am, was he brandishing a weapon or threatening someone?” “No? Okay, then what he is doing is legal, and we don’t investigate legal use of firearms any more than we investigate mowing the lawn.”
In every state that has it, constitutional carry isn’t a problem, and the world doesn’t come to an end regardless of what these old timers have to say. They’re stuck in the dark ages advocating Jim Crow laws that are bigoted and prejudiced. Don’t be like them.
On March 7, 2017 at 7:26 am, Duke Norfolk said:
Yes, the conflicts of interest are glaring and disqualifying. The fact that these guys can’t see the absurdity of their answers is indicative of both their inability to think critically and the public’s likewise.
What part of “criminals don’t follow the law” don’t these people understand? It’s maddening. Of course some of them do understand that but just want to retain the power to themselves (and the financial gains). As it ever was.
On March 7, 2017 at 8:54 am, Haywood Jablome said:
“As for the awful Sheriff, this is just stunning. He ought to be teaching his deputies that everyone is assumed to be carrying, all of the time.”
Amen. I’m not a cop and I do that. His idiocy could be chalked up to riding a desk for too long, but I see cops everyday with a complete disregard for situational awareness. But, they’re the professionals…….
On March 7, 2017 at 3:20 pm, Pat Hines said:
So-called “Jim Crow Laws” prevented Black Lives Matter, riots such as seen in Ferguson and other southern locations, and much else. They were not wrong or “dark ages”.
“Jim Crow Laws” were civilized responses to obvious problems. We need their return.
On March 7, 2017 at 3:31 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Pat, you’re imagining things. The existence of Jim Crow laws has nothing whatsoever to do with whether a riot happened near St. Louis or the absence of one in a Southern city.
On March 7, 2017 at 3:36 pm, Pat Hines said:
I’ve studied history, Hershel, and must disagree with your assessment. You have to go all the way back to about 1866-68 and then work your way forward in time.
For example, the so-called Wilmington Massacre (1898), was in fact a retaking of a North Carolina city, Wilmington was the largest city in North Carolina at the time, from an essentially Marxist coalition of negroes, Yankee carpetbaggers, and southern collaborators and returning it to legitimate rule.
You won’t read that in any current publication, but that’s what happened.
On March 7, 2017 at 3:45 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Do you put yourself in the same boat as these two characters above in the article?
On March 7, 2017 at 4:13 pm, Pat Hines said:
Hershel,
That’s a “did you quit beating your wife, yes or no” question. My great grandfather was a member of the Klan in eastern North Carolina, near Kinston. I’m proud of the fact that he took action to save the south from Yankee (Republican) predation.
There are a number of recent memes that say, “I haven’t seen Democrats this angry since their slaves were taken away”, about as ahistoric as one might want to go. The Republican Party was the first Marxist political party in the US; with Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell, they’re still there.
On March 7, 2017 at 4:19 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Do you believe that we should have to get permitted to carry weapons, or that the *.gov should be able to control the manner in which we carry weapons?
On March 7, 2017 at 10:55 pm, Pat Hines said:
I believe that southern men and women should have unlimited access to any weapon they consider necessary for their well being.
On March 10, 2017 at 3:57 am, Paul Kersey said:
That’s because there are no longer Jim Crow laws which used to keep white people and the cities they created safe from the violent and destructive behavior of blacks when left unchecked.
The civil rights era ushered in some very uncivil conditions for white people and the conditions that have empowered blacks to act on their natural impulses to commit crimes. Sure not all blacks. Man bites dog sometimes.
Black on white crime is statistically many times greater than the reverse. Blacks now feel quite comfortable to riot and violently attack white people in broad daylight and get cover by the media (and the previous administration) as well as idealistic liberals who seem to live in an alternate universe, ignoring the abundance of evidence that contradicts their fantasy vision of a diverse society.
“We need criminal justice reform!” In that statement they are admitting that they are incapable of living in a civilized society and obeying laws. They want to be exempt from the law. Otherwise, what are blacks actually protesting when they try to defend the actions of other blacks who have died while trying to murder a police officer or a White person?
They have learned that they can blame all their bad behavior and failures on white people and not only will they be absolved, but in most cases, they will be rewarded or the family can hit the ghetto lottery after demanding answers as to why DeShawn got ventilated while trying to kill a cop.
According to the FBI, over 30,000 white women are raped by black males every year, while 0 black women are raped by white men.
There surely wasn’t the outrageous amount of black on white assaults, murders, rapes, home invasions, car jackings and robberies and Ferguson style riots that are commonplace today when there was segregation and Jim Crow laws.
In a sane world, people wouldn’t be compelled to ignore common sense and pretend that everyone is exactly equal in every way. In saner times, there were Jim Crow laws to keep us safe.
On March 7, 2017 at 9:14 pm, Joseph P. Martino said:
Instead of requiring a training course for a concealed carry permit, the course (apparently 8 hours) should be a mandatory part of every high school education. It’s at least as important as driver ed. Teach them the laws on use of lethal force, and familiarize them with guns. Require them to pass a marksmanship test to complete the course. Then, when they’re of an age to get a CCW permit, they already have the training.
On March 10, 2017 at 11:52 am, John Taylor said:
That is what parents/family are for. Permit me to take it one step further, “That is what ‘father figures’ are for.”
On March 10, 2017 at 11:55 am, John Taylor said:
We got very far afield from the issue at hand in the comments, it seems.
As long as we permit the state (both figurative and literal) to restrict out fundamental human rights, we are no more than slaves, A permit to carry concealed makes no logical sense, and even less so in an open-carry state.