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January 23, 2020

LUMBERTON There was a standing-room-only crowd Thursday evening in the A.D. Lewis Auditorium at Robeson Community College during a forum on preventing and stopping an active shooter situation in churches.

The forum was in response to a recent shooting at a church in Texas during which a person who was armed killed the assailant, but not before two people had died and others were injured.

The auditorium accommodates about 800 people.

To be honest, we were only expecting 200 people, Robeson County Sheriff Burnis Wilkins said.

More than 100 people were turned away because of fire codes related to crowd size, the sheriff said. But, because of the large turnout at the event that began at 6 p.m. and public interest generated by the event, he is considering holding more forums in the future.

The days and times we are living in, we need to protect people at all times, said Sheila Beck, a member of Ten Mile Center Baptist Church in Saddletree.

Beck said the forum gave her very educational life-saving information to help her church form a plan in case of an active shooter situation.

Others echoed her concern.

I hope to protect our church, said Danny Smith, who attends Island Grove Baptist Church in Prospect.

Michael Bowen, pastor of East Lumberton Baptist Church, said the church has a security team and he came hoping to develop a plan of action.

Its a good idea. We need this, Bowen said. All churches need this.

Members of Faith Assembly Church of God, on Evans Street in St. Pauls, also were present.

We came out to hear about how we can prevent some of the tragedies we are hearing about in the media, Christopher Clark said.

The event hit home for members of Westside Baptist Church in Red Springs.

The churchs pastor was beat up during a robbery that occurred at a choir practice in March 1996, said Kevin Mauldin, a member of the church. After the incident, the church formed a security team to protect those in attendance, Mauldin said.

Im a firm believer its my responsibility to take care of me, he said. You have a right to take care of yourself.

Sheriff Wilkins agrees.

We cannot allow you to remain in church as a sitting duck and just sit there, Wilkins said.

Lt. Lewis Woodard, Robeson County Sheriffs Offices training coordinator, showed a video of the Dec. 29 church shooting at West Freeway Church of Christ in Texas that left two people dead. Woodard then used images showing the behaviors of the people present during the shooting to demonstrate what should be done.

Churchgoers should be aware of their surroundings at all times, Woodard said.

In the event of gunfire, they should get down, move away from the shooter and follow directions of the security team, he said. He encouraged using anything available, such as fire extinguishers or books, to try to stop shooter.

If you got 100 people in your church, hit him with 100 hymn books, he said. Hit him with 100 Bibles, its OK, I promise you.

Security teams should consist of more than one person, with a weekly rotation, the lieutenant said.

You need to have a plan, Woodard said. If you dont have a plan, you got nothing.

People with concealed carry permits should practice regularly to maintain accuracy, he said.

Sen. Danny Britt Jr. used the forum to speak about about Senate Bill 90, also called the Protect Religious Meeting Places bill.

The bill was filed Feb. 19, 2019, and if it becomes law it would allow people with concealed carry permits to carry handguns into churches that also operate as schools. Britt mentioned Antioch Baptist Church, located at 5089 Old Whiteville Road, which also houses Antioch Christian Academy.

Under current North Carolina law, they cannot have individuals in that church Sunday even when school is not going on with a firearm, Britt said.

He said SB 90 will allow handguns on the property outside of the schools regular hours of operation.

That is something that is very important to churches like Antioch Baptist and other churches like that across the state, Britt said.

As of June 11, 2019, the bill was in the Senate Judiciary Committee. No action has been taken on SB 90 since it entered the committee.

People can carry weapons into churches that dont double as schools.

Sheriff Wilkins reminded forum attendees that Robeson Community College offers the concealed weapon course once a month.

Shauna Hammonds, a civilian employee with the Robeson County Sheriffs Office, hands out on Thursday programs to guests at the Prevention and Response to the Active Shooter in Houses of Worship Robeson County Forum at Robeson Community College. The event was in response to a shooting last month at a Texas church that left two people dead.

Sheriff Burnis Wilkins speaks Thursday to a large crowd at the A.D. Lewis Auditorium on the campus of Robeson Community College during the Prevention and Response to the Active Shooter in Houses of Worship Robeson County Forum. About 800 people attended, with some having to be turned away.

Read more from the original source:
Britt wants Robeson as Second Amendment Sanctuary - The Robesonian

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (localmemphis.com) People are fired up about a weapons policy at the Landers Center. Currently, the venue says anyone not working security at a sporting game needs an empty holster.

However, an elected official is among those who disagree when that person is an off-duty officer.

The Landers Center was very clear on its firearms policy during Memphis Hustle games, like the one Wednesday when an officer attempted to enter with his weapon.

He was told he either had to hand over his weapon, which no police officer is going to do, or he had to leave the event, said Mississippi State Rep. Dana Criswell, who represents District 6.

He did leave the Memphis Hustle game, and the Landers Center says the officer worked at Northwest Community College.

Hes trained to use a weapon. Thats part of his job, said a father, who took his kids to Fridays Hustle game. So, hes going to keep someone like me safe.

State Rep. Criswell shared a post online, captioned no police allowed with and x across the Landers Center building grabbing peoples attention.

The venues executive director tells me they are contractually bound to restrict weapons.

We have a private entity, the Memphis Hustle the Memphis Grizzlies, the NBA, that has a LLC agreement with us and they state in there no firearms, explained Landers Center Exec. Director Todd Mastry.

Criswell says its a step too far when that applies to an officer and violates federal law.

When it extends so far as to a police officer in uniform, whosoever policy it is whether its Landers whether who theyre renting it to, I believe the people of DeSoto County have just said thats enough, Criswell said.

DeSoto County became the first in Mississippi Tuesday to become a second amendment safe haven after a vote Tuesday. Its essentially the same as sanctuaries sweeping other counties in the United States.

It says county funds wont be used to restrict the constitutional right to bear arms and will oppose any state and federal restrictions.

Dont be fooled that this is what its about, Mastry said.

He stressed if you come to public county events, like graduations, weapons are allowed inside.

See the article here:
DeSoto County becomes first in Mississippi to be a second amendment safe haven - WATN - Local 24

Gaston County could soon be added to a growing list of local governments vowing to oppose gun control efforts they view as unconstitutional.

Tracy Philbeck, chairman of the Gaston County Board of Commissioners, said he's sponsoring a resolution with Commissioners Chad Brown and Allen Fraley to designate Gaston County a "Second Amendment sanctuary."

It's a move to publicly protect a county residents right to keep and bear arms, supporters say. Commissioners will vote Jan. 28.

"As of right now you can say it's largely symbolic," Philbeck said. "Don't underestimate, though, if we have to we will act. As long as I'm chairman of the commission I will not support any law or ordinance that goes against the constitutional right of folks to bear arms."

The resolution states support for the Second Amendment and, "to oppose, within the limits of the Constitutions of the United States and the State of North Carolina, any efforts to unconstitutionally restrict such rights..."

Resolutions have been approved by counties across the country, including most recently in Lincoln County.

Philbeck and Chad Brown called the move a precautionary measure made necessary by the passage of new gun measures in states like Virginia and Colorado.

"I'm proud to be a sponsor on this," Chad Brown said. "Our constitution has been chipped away at by the liberal left and this is simply us saying we don't want anymore slices taken from the constitution."

Point of view matters

Duke University Law Professor Darrell Miller writes and teaches in the area of civil right and constitutional law, with emphasis on the Second and Thirteenth Amendments.

He's also written extensively about District of Columbia V. Heller, a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2008 that views the Second Amendment as protecting an individuals right to own firearms for lawful purposes like self-defense within the home.

He wrote last summer that Second Amendment sanctuary efforts in Colorado - that largely opposed so-called "red flag" laws that could allow law enforcement or families to petition courts to remove firearms from those who could be a danger to themselves or others - could be regarded as efforts to "mobilize citizens in an act of constitution-making outside of the courts," particularly in cases where courts have yet to rule on the laws in question.

In response to questions last week, Miller said the Second Amendment sanctuary movement, at its core, is an effort by local governments to use constitutional framing of their enactments to affect policy and law.

"Given there's no gun violence prevention proposals with any realistic chance of making it through the current General Assembly in N.C., it seems the immediate effect of this effort in N.C. would be to show solidarity with gun-rights activists in Virginia and elsewhere, and to act as an announcement of non-compliance if there's a change of control in Raleigh," Miller wrote.

Greg Wallace, a professor of law at Campbell University School of Law, said the Second Amendment sanctuary movement could be indicative of conflict between state and federal obligations.

"I think firearms owners see very extreme measures being proposed by gun control proponents that really aren't aimed at just the criminal misuse of guns but aimed much more broadly," Wallace said.

He said state and county officials must uphold state law, duties that could clash with constitutional obligations.

"There has been a long history of government officials, particularly in the executive branch, saying 'OK if the state legislature has passed a law that we believe in good faith is unconstitutional, we don't have an obligation to enforce it," Wallace said. "That comes in part from the oaths these officers take to support the constitution first. There's a long tradition of civil resistance."

Wallace said such efforts could leave officials open to legal action, including lawsuits and potential removal from office.

"There is a risk in it for them," Wallace said. "But the flip side, if so many communities sign on to this what's the enforcement mechanism the state is going to use? That's an open question."

Commissioners, including Bob Hovis, Tom Keigher, Jack Brown and Ronnie Worley voiced support for the Second Amendment sanctuary measure.

Gaston County Democratic Party Chairman Daniel Caudill and Democratic Party county commission candidate Ray Raynor, view the measure as unnecessary.

"I see the symbolism they're going for," according to Caudill, a U.S. Army veteran and gun owner. "We're scratching our heads knowing that sanctuary ordinances don't supersede state or federal law. I think there's more effective things they could be working on for the county."

Gaston County District Attorney Locke Bell said he would neither support nor oppose the resolution, citing the constitution as protection enough.

"I'm a firm believer in the Second Amendment and I own numerous firearms," Bell said. "I'm not sure this movement by the commissioners is needed. We already have the Second Amendment protecting us here in Gaston County and I think that is sufficient."

Reach Adam Orr at 704-869-1828 or aorr@gastongazette.com

Link:
Gaston Commissioners to vote on Second Amendment sanctuary proposal - Gaston Gazette

JACKSON, MI While the agenda was light, the meeting room was packed Tuesday, Jan. 21, for the monthly board meeting of the Jackson County Board of Commissioners.

Dozens of people showed up with a resolution, asking commissioners to declare Jackson County a Second Amendment sanctuary county. Numerous board members expressed support, but sent the proposed resolution to county attorneys before considering a decision.

The board will likely vote on the resolution at the 7 p.m. meeting Feb. 18, board members said. Meetings are hosted on the fifth floor of the Jackson County Tower Building, 120 W. Michigan Ave.

The resolution would support the county sheriff and prosecutor to use their sound discretion to not enforce against any citizen an unconstitutional firearms law."

A similar push is popping up in every Michigan county through a Facebook group called Michigan for 2A Sanctuary Counties, which was created on Dec. 25 and already has 86,000 members. The Jackson version of the page has more than 230 members.

Efforts are in response to Virginia passing red flag gun laws which would allow police to confiscate guns from people deemed threats.

Such laws are a threat to due process, said Bob Wilson, chairman of Jacksons sanctuary county group.

"If someone doesn't like what you have to say, they'll just get on the phone and say, 'Hey, this guy's threatening to shoot up a school,'" Wilson said. "And then they'll just show up and grab (your guns), just because somebody wants to lie."

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer pushed for similar extreme risk gun bills in Michigan after a weekend of deadly shootings in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas in August.

Such laws will only hurt law-abiding gun owners, not criminals, Jacksons sanctuary county group members told commissioners on Tuesday.

"We refuse to be punished for the actions of criminals," Wilson said. "We will not sit back and allow what happened in Virginia to happen in Michigan."

State Rep. Julie Alexander, R-Hanover, also spoke at Tuesdays meeting in support of the resolution. She was a member of the Jackson board before winning a state legislature seat for 2017 and 2019.

With the increased conversations on gun confiscation lately at a state and national level, Michigan residents are nervous, Alexander said.

Wilson hopes gun supporters will fill the meeting room on Feb. 18, showing the board which side of the debate county residents stand on. Commissioners Phil Duckham, Tony Bair, David Elwell and Corey Kennedy expressed support of the resolution, during Tuesdays meeting.

Stay back. You cannot have our guns, Wilson said. Period.

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Read more:
You cannot have our guns: Group urges Jackson to be 2nd Amendment sanctuary county - MLive.com

As an incorporated provision of the United States Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment is the supreme law of the land, applying to all U.S. jurisdictions and to the actions of federal, state, and local officials. The U.S. Supreme Court provides the final and authoritative interpretation of that provision, as well as other provisions of the U.S. Constitution. All of this is elementary civics.

But the State of California believes it knows better, requiring publisher McGraw-Hill to annotate a discussion of the Bill of Rights in a popular social studies textbook with the states own peculiar view of the Second Amendments meaning.

According to pictures from the California edition in the New York Times, the annotation states:

Right to Bear Arms This amendment is often debated. Originally it was intended to prevent the national government from repeating the actions of the British, who tried to take weapons away from the colonial militia, or armed forces of the citizens. This amendment seems to support the right of citizens to own firearms, but the Supreme Court has ruled it does not prevent Congress from regulating the interstate sale of weapons.

The Times article goes on to state that the publisher said it had created the additional wording on the Second Amendment and gun control for the California textbook. The same language, however, does not appear in a national version of the same section, according to the Times report.

The point of the New York Times article is to suggest that different states emphasize different aspects of U.S. history in otherwise similar textbooks, depending on the prevailing political outlook among the states education officials.

Whatever might be said of that approach, the problem with Californias account of the Second Amendment isnt just one of emphasis but of accuracy. California, which prides itself on being one of the most anti-gun states in the nation, simply gets it wrong, using language that falsely portrays the Second Amendment as a debated provision that has changed meaning over time and that only seems to protect an individual right.

Any debate about the Second Amendments protection of an individual right have been authoritatively settled by the U.S. Supreme Court: The Second Amendment protects the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation, independent of service in an organized militia. That fact was unambiguously articulated in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008.

That decision, moreover, was based on the public understanding of the Second Amendment at the time it was ratified. In other words, not only was the Second Amendment an individual right as of 2008, it has always been an individual right. As the Supreme Court noted, virtually all interpreters of the Second Amendment in the century after its enactment interpreted the Amendment as we do. It is false to suggest, as the California textbook does, that it originally meant something different and then somehow changed meaning in 2008.

Regarding the prefatory militia clause, the Supreme Court took pains to explain the difference between the justification for including the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights and the scope and substance of that right.

The debate with respect to the right to keep and bear arms, as with other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, was not over whether it was desirable (all agreed that it was) but over whether it needed to be codified in the Constitution, the court wrote. What justified its codification was the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens' militia by taking away their arms . But, the court noted, the prefatory militia clause announcing the reason for the rights codification does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause.

That scope, meanwhile, included using arms for self-defense and hunting, with self-defense being the central component of the right itself, according to the Supreme Court.

The California textbook also misconstrues what the term militia meant to the founding generation at the time of the Second Amendments enactment. It wasnt just a discrete, organized military force, the court explained, but members of the population physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense, whether they were mustered in that capacity or not. Thus, the terms militia and the people are not at odds with each other in the Second Amendment. The people, with their own arms, are the basis of the militia. To protect the peoples private right to arms is therefore to protect the militias ability to muster with arms and to preserve its viability.

As for Congress ability to regulate the interstate sale of weapons, the Supreme Court indicated in Heller that laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms are part of the longstanding history and tradition of the Second Amendment, and are thus presumptively lawful. That does not mean, however, that every such law trumps the amendments protections, especially if there is no longstanding precedent for it.

In any event, the Supreme Court has yet to hear a case that pits the Second Amendment against the Commerce Clause, and it explicitly reserved that and other questions for later consideration. [S]ince this case represents this Courts first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire field, the court wrote. [T]here will be time enough to expound upon the historical justifications for the exceptions we have mentioned if and when those exceptions come before us.

California likes to emphasize how it sees things differently than the rest of the United States. Thats why common consumer products come with warnings that they include substances known to the State of California to pose various hazards, including cancer or birth defects. So numerous are these warnings that people at this point are most likely to ignore them as sensational and unreliable.

The states students would be wise to take the same approach to official state pronouncements about firearms and the Second Amendment.

California, as the saying goes, is entitled to its opinions. But its not entitled to its own facts.

And when it comes to the Second Amendment, the facts are different than the opinions expressed in the California-specific version of McGraw-Hills social studies textbook.

Activist Wilma Mankiller is quoted as saying, Whoever controls the education of our children controls our future.

Year after year California chips away at the Second Amendment with its ever-expanding gun control regime.

If this continues unabated, the right to keep and bear arms will effectively be nullified for future generations of Californians.

Whats worse if Californias educational bureaucrats have their way is that those generations will be too ignorant of their liberties to even understand what has been taken from them.

Our advice to these students is to exercise their First Amendment rights to learn and speak the truth, and as soon as they are able, exercise the right to vote in favor of those who respect their fundamental liberties, rather than those who try to write them out of history.

See more here:
State of Ignorance: California Pushes False Information to School Kids on the Second Amendment - NRA ILA