It’s been about four months since the illustrious Johnston County Board of Commissioners passed the Orwellian named Good Neighbor Firearms Ordinance. It was a quite a sight to see first hand. Sure, there were a number of citizens who spoke at the hearing, but it was clear that the commissioners were not interested in debate. They were not interested in facts. This entire process was simply to save face so that the commissioners could say, “hey, we listened.” They didn’t.

The vote was 7-0 for the ordinance and not a peep came from any commissioners other than Allen “Cradle to the Grave” Mims. Mims actually used that phrase during the February working group meeting. I wish I had recorded it. I’m sure one of the TV stations that was there has it recorded somewhere, but will probably never release it. I don’t remember the exact context, but Mims showed his true colors as a collectivist by implying that it was job of commissioners to take care of Johnston County citizens from the cradle to the grave. What better definition of the Nanny State than that?

We’ve got some time before the next election, but some of us are considering what we can do to at least make these commissioners work to keep their seats.

Tony Braswell in particular has got to go. Somehow, after submitting some of my comments via the form on the county website, I got included in a email thread where Braswell was blasting a citizen for daring to “misrepresent our actions as anti gun just because some special interest group says its true” and implied that if the citizen who challenged him was not a “veteran of a foreign war” and has “a son wounded in Afghanistan,” then he did not have a “right to criticize me and my board.” That’s right: Mr. Braswell actually tried to make the case that a citizen did not have the right to criticize the board unless he was a veteran and also that the board was his. Braswell included all six of the other commissioners in the list of recipients, so I challenged him publicly in email and then later at the hearing. I didn’t mention his name specifically or look at him during my testimony, but I did see him fidget in his chair, and since all the other commissioners saw both Braswell’s email and mine, they all knew who I was referring to.

He later sent me a non-apology apology. It amazes me that anyone would still think that anything that starts with “I am sorry you got involved in this email chain…” could be taken as an apology. It’s clear that he’s just not happy that he got caught and then called out in public at the hearing in front of his fellow board members.

This sad affair did not surprise me one bit. But I did get angry enough about it that I knew it wasn’t wise to post anything here at that time. I’m glad I waited. And despite this lost local battle, we are winning at the state and federal level in more ways than we are losing. As someone posted recently, I cringe when I hear that another state has passed a law (or is attempting to) to allow Constitutional Carry, when what is really needed is for all gun laws to be repealed save one federal law that is a restriction on the government rather than the people: the Second Amendment.

But I’ll take incremental victories where we can get them. After all, it took at least 75 years to get to where we are now, with gun rights, and at least 150 with several other unalienable rights.

I’m going to try and post a little more often, now. Really, this time. Now that I’ve had a taste of a bit of activism, I’m sorta hooked. And I’d like to document it a bit.