NC SPIN: Supreme Court takes 5 cases from Court of Appeals, school Funding issues, Medicaid reform and expansion and #TellUsSomethingWeDon’tKnow.

Published October 17, 2014

Topics: Supreme Court takes 5 cases from Court of Appeals, school Funding issues, Medicaid reform and expansion and #TellUsSomethingWeDon’tKnow.

Panelists: Rufus Edmisten, Former Secretary of State, Former Attorney General, Chris Fitzsimon, Director of NC Policy Watch, Becki Gray, Columnist, Carolina Journal, John Hood, President of the John Locke Foundation, and Tom Campbell, Moderator.

October 19, 2014 at 10:08 am
John Allan Tallant says:

Rufus Edmisten made the statement in the October 19th segment that Article 1 section 30 of the NC Constitution says that NC may never have concealed weapons.

Here is the text from the NC General Assembly website:

Sec. 30. Militia and the right to bear arms.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; and, as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they shall not be maintained, and the military shall be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power. Nothing herein shall justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons, or prevent the General Assembly from enacting penal statutes against that practice.

I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me any fair reading of that section would be that nothing in section 30 authorizes concealed carry nor prohibits the General Assembly from regulating the practice. I don't see any reading that supports his flat assertion and unless he can provide one I think he owes the viewers a retraction and an apology.