A decade ago, I wrote a post about the circumstances under which police may stop a person who is carrying a gun openly. A lot has changed since then. The Supreme Court has strengthened the Second Amendment in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. __ (2022). The General Assembly has eliminated the requirement that North Carolina residents obtain a permit before buying a handgun. See S.L. 2023-8. And empirical scholarship suggests that many more Americans are carrying guns on a daily basis. See Ali Awhani-Robar et al., Trend in Loaded Handgun Carrying Among Adult Handgun Owners in the United States, 2015-2019, Am. J. Pub. Health (2022) (finding that in 2019, “approximately 6 million [gun owners carried] daily,” which was “twice the 3 million who did so in 2015”). So it is a good time to revisit the question.
terry stop
Case Summaries – N.C. Supreme Court (August 13, 2021)
This post summarizes criminal decisions released by the Supreme Court of North Carolina on August 13, 2021.
Frisking a Person for a Weapon When a State Allows Carrying a Concealed Weapon with a Permit
Sometimes a legislature enacts a statute that has consequences beyond the direct impact of the statute’s provisions. West Virginia’s statute allowing the carrying of a concealed weapon with a permit may be such an example, based on the February 23, 2016, ruling of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Robinson. The court ruled that a West Virginia officer did not have reasonable suspicion to conduct a frisk because there was insufficient evidence of dangerousness, relying in part on a person’s right in West Virginia to carry a concealed weapon with a permit. And this ruling may impact cases in other states, such as North Carolina, that have a statute similar, although not identical, to West Virginia’s. This post discusses this ruling and its potential impact in North Carolina state courts.
Revisiting State v. Jackson, the Pedestrian Evasion Case
Last summer, I wrote about State v. Jackson, __ N.C. App. __, 758 S.E.2d 39 (2014), in which the court of appeals ruled that an officer lacked reasonable suspicion to stop a pedestrian who engaged in what the officer viewed as suspicious and evasive behavior. Last month, the state supreme court reversed the court of appeals. The opinion is here; my summary and analysis of it is below.