by Buncombe County is one of the most liberal counties in the state. It is the sea of blue in an ocean of red here in western North Carolina. Cars are still covered with bumper stickers for Bernie from 2016 and for Obama from 2008. Of course, you see the Resist! bumper sticker everywhere.
It is against this background that I was a bit surprised when I heard at the January gun show that there was a move to ask Buncombe County Commissioners to make it a Second Amendment Sanctuary. I figured a few people would show up and the oh, so liberal commissioners would just roll their eyes.
I was right on the second part but extremely wrong on the first part.
According to local TV station WLOS, the entire Commission meeting room was filled and an overflow room had to be established.
A video clip of the meeting can be seen here.
People for and against making Buncombe a Second Amendment Sanctuary spoke for two hours. Given you are only allowed three minutes to speak, this was a lot of folks. From what I can gather, with few exceptions, most were in favor of making it a sanctuary county.
Amy Benedict of the Demanding Moms spoke against it. The clip above, unfortunately, doesn’t give her full comments. The on-air report noted her saying they weren’t “against guns but gun violence”. Right.
In the end, as I would have expected, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners did nothing. Nonetheless, it does let the Board and the public know that there is strong support for gun rights in my oh, so liberal county.