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NC Gun Rights Activists Promote Largely Symbolic Opposition To Gun Control With Second Amendment San

Haywood County commissioners prepare for a Jan. 21 meeting at the Historic Haywood County Courthouse.
Haywood County commissioners prepare for a Jan. 21 meeting at the Historic Haywood County Courthouse.
Haywood County commissioners prepare for a Jan. 21 meeting at the Historic Haywood County Courthouse.
Credit Cory Vaillancourt
Haywood County commissioners prepare for a Jan. 21 meeting at the Historic Haywood County Courthouse.

As a package of gun control measures makes its way through Virginia’s newly-Democratic legislature, gun rights activists around the South are turning to their county boards of commissioners to go on the record in opposition to gun control.Host Frank Stasio talks about Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions around the South with Smoky Mountain News’ Cory Vaillancourt and Atlanta's WABE reporter Lisa Hagen.

In Virginia, one sheriff has declared that he will deputize citizens and refuse to enforce any gun control law he deems unconstitutional. The view that county sheriffs can decide the constitutionality of a law has roots in white supremacy and dissent. Although there is little likelihood that the Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly will introduce gun control laws, citizens in counties like Davidson, Macon and Haywood have begun to introduce “Second Amendment sanctuary” resolutions.

These resolutions are mostly symbolic, as state law trumps local ordinances, but that does not seem to be stopping the movement, according to reporting from Smoky Mountain News’ Cory Vaillancourt. Host Frank Stasio talks with Vaillancourt and reporter Lisa Hagen, a Guns & America reporting fellow at WABE in Atlanta, about Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions around the South.

 

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Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
Josie Taris left her home in Fayetteville in 2014 to study journalism at Northwestern University. There, she took a class called Journalism of Empathy and found her passion in audio storytelling. She hopes every story she produces challenges the audience's preconceptions of the world. After spending the summer of 2018 working in communications for a Chicago nonprofit, she decided to come home to work for the station she grew up listening to. When she's not working, Josie is likely rooting for the Chicago Cubs or petting every dog she passes on the street.