The Cabarrus County Commission today is considering changes to the county parks ordinance to comply with state gun laws. WFAE's Duncan McFadyen reports.
The proposed change would affect where people with concealed carry permits are allowed to bring their weapons. In 2013, the state legislature changed concealed carry law to allow people with permits to take their guns into parks. UNC School of Government professor Jeff Welty says lawmakers wanted to make the regulation uniform across the state.
“They wanted to avoid running into this patchwork of regulations as you drive across the state on I-40,” he says.
State law prohibits concealed weapons on athletic fields, but it leaves it up to counties to set the policy for county-owned buildings.
Cabarrus County's park ordinance currently prohibits concealed weapons in county parks. That's technically a violation of state law, though Welty says any county ordinances are superseded by state law. The proposed change would allow concealed weapons in parks and ban them from county owned buildings.
Mecklenburg County’s parks ordinance reflects the change to state law.