Congressional candidate George Holding has put a gotcha ad up on his website – a video showing his Republican opponent, Paul Coble, telling a Wayne County Tea Party candidate forum in February he didn’t believe those with firearms should be prohibited from carrying them in certain places.
“I got my guns. They’re my guns, and you have no right to my guns,” Coble said.
The gotcha is that Coble was on the Raleigh City Council back in 1995 when it unanimously voted to prohibit concealed handguns on city property, including parks and greenways. (Former state GOP chairman Tom Fetzer, then Raleigh’s mayor, also cast that vote.)
The vote was part of a trend among cities and counties statewide to ban concealed handguns after the legislature that year voted to relax concealed weapon laws.
It’s funny how these issues just keep circling back. The current General Assembly last year voted to prohibit local government from banning concealed-carry permit-holders to bring their firearms into parks, but said local authorities could still ban them from recreational facilities.
Legislators wanted to expand the carry zone into restaurants and employers’ parking lots, but ran into resistance from business interests. The issue could come up again this year.
