As noted yesterday, in its 1875 Constitutional Amendments, North Carolina gave its General Assembly the ability to enact “penal statutes against” the practice of carrying concealed weapons. Not surprisingly, having given themselves the Constitutional green light, it was not long before the North Carolina General Assembly did just that.
In on July 1, 1879 it became a misdemeanor to carry a concealed weapon off of one’s own property in North Carolina.
Public Law of the State of North Carolina, Session 1879, Chapter 127 — An Act to Make the Carrying of Concealed Weapons a Misdemeanor — was ratified March 5, 1879.
As you can see in the picture of the law below, in addition to any pistol, other banned weapons were any “bowie-knife, dirk, dagger, slung-shot, loaded cane, brass, iron, or metallic knuckles, or other deadly weapon of like kind.” It truly was a ban on concealed WEAPONS, not concealed firearms.
A second notable aspect of the law to me is Section 4 which maintains: “Any person being off his premises and having upon his person any deadly weapon described in section one, such possession shall be prima facie evidence of the concealment thereof.”
As I will discuss in my next post, this law was subsequently challenged by L.R. Speller and upheld by the Supreme Court of North Carolina in 1882, but with an interesting finding with respect to open carry.
[…] my previous post, I described the legislature’s 1879 ban on carrying concealed weapons in North Carolina. This law was subsequently challenged in court by L.R. Speller (State v. Speller […]
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[…] amendment to permit the legislature to regulate concealed carry, the legislature’s subsequent 1879 ban on concealed carry, and two legal challenges to the ban in the early […]
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[…] is also a form of firearms carry right. Here in North Carolina, shall issue concealed carry was banned in 1879 then legalized again in 1995, but the right to open carry was reiterated during a legal challenge to the concealed carry ban […]
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