Here’s a story that supports the old saying, “When you criminalize guns, only criminals will have guns.”
Two people leaving the North Carolina State Fair on Saturday were robbed at gunpoint, after a legal battle had enabled the the fair to be declared a “gun-free” zone, WATE-TV reported.
Image via WATE-TV
Image via WATE-TV
It would be “unwise and imprudent” to allow concealed weapons at the state fair, Wake CountySuperior Court judge Donald Stephens said earlier this month as he ruled against allowing concealed firearms at the event.
Opponents of the gun ban blamed Stephens and other officials for the robbery — and claimed that the ban was illegal in the first place.
“By announcing to violent predators that people attending the North Carolina state fair would beunable to protect themselves, the responsibility for this armed robbery of fair-goers lies squarely with Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, who illegally banned concealed at the fair, and…Stephens, who willfully misinterpreted the law to impose his own worldview,” Paul Valone, president of Grass Roots North Carolina, told Guns.com.
Valone had argued the case in front of Stephens that the state fair gun ban violated a law passedby the state legislature that expanded concealed carry rights, and Stephens acknowledged that allowing concealed weapons ”may chill crime,” but he upheld the ban regardless.
“As we’ve seen time and again, gun-free zones are dangerous places for law-abiding citizens,” Valone said, commenting on Saturday’s armed robbery.
In the robbery, which police said occurred around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, two people walking back to their car from the fair were accosted by men in a tan or cream colored Lincoln car, who brandished handguns and took the victims’ wallets.
On Wednesday afternoon, Raleigh police spokesperson Laura Hourigan told TheBlaze that one person, Kamonti Yasmin Blackwell-Price, had been arrested in connection with the robbery, but that the investigation was ongoing and further arrests may be made.
Anyone with information on the robbery is urged to contact Raleigh police.