RALEIGH — As of the end of the first week of February, 60 of North Carolina’s 100 counties have passed some form of Second Amendment resolution affirming the right of citizens to bear arms. That number is over four times the total from the end of January when only 12 counties had passed such a measure.

Brunswick, Carteret, Lee and Lenoir are the most recent to join the movement.

The Franklin County Commission passed their resolution on Feb. 3, stating the county will protect the rights of its citizens to keep and bear arms and oppose any unconstitutional means to restrict such rights.

Onslow County commissioners met on Feb. 10 and unanimously adopted a Second Amendment resolution. By the recommendation from the county’s attorney, the Onslow resolution does not declare the county specifically to be a “sanctuary.”

Onslow Chairman Jack Bright said that they passed this resolution to let legislators know how their citizens felt after watching the introduction of laws restricting gun rights in Virginia.

On Feb. 11, Madison commissioners voted 4-0 to pass a resolution that declares Madison County to be a “Second Amendment Sanctuary.” The next day, on Feb. 12, Martin County commissioners unanimously passed a similar resolution.

Iredell County’s Board of Commissioners discussed the topic in January and unanimously passed a resolution at its meeting in early February, as did commissioners in Bladen, Columbus and Johnston counties.

The Columbus resolution was supported by Rep. Brendan Jones (R-Columbus) at the county commissioner’s January meeting.

In a letter to the commissioners, Jones said, “Recent gun control efforts by those around the country, however, have led various counties and towns to take a proactive stance to ensure there is no infringement upon this constitutional right. As a result, passing or enacting a resolution of this kind would work to oppose restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.”

Gun control efforts in other areas of the country are headed to North Carolina soon, starting with a major gun control group dropping a large amount of cash to push for more restrictions on guns in the state.

Everytown for Gun Safety PAC poured around $2.5 million in Virginia during 2019 to influence gun control legislation, and the group plans to spend at least $250,000 in North Carolina this year.

Everytown was founded and is largely financed by Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Members of Everytown include Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, Students Demand Action, and Mayors against Illegal Guns, which is an organization also co-founded by Bloomberg.

The group’s first expenditure will be a video ad on Facebook titled “North Carolina: On Notice.” The ad claims 1,300 people die by gun violence each year in the state but that number is problematic due to the conflation of overall gun deaths with criminal activities involving firearms.

The Everytown Facebook ad uses numbers mainly from the Center for Disease Control’s 2017 data showing North Carolina had 1,430 deaths in attributable to firearms, however, that total includes suicides and accidental shootings.

According to the FBI, the number of homicides that took place in North Carolina involving a firearm in 2017 was 292, or just 20% of the number Everytown uses.

Counties with large urban centers like Guilford, Mecklenburg, New Hanover and Wake have yet to take up such measures.

Dara Demi, communications director for Wake County government, told NSJ, “The Wake County Board of Commissioners has not discussed this issue to date during its formal meetings, and it is not currently on the agenda for any future meetings.”

According to General Assembly Senate Republicans, in North Carolina counties adopting Second Amendment resolutions, 76% of Democrats on county boards voted to support sanctuary policy.

“You won’t find a clearer example of the internal fractures facing the Democratic Party. Even elected officials are bucking the extreme urban-focused agenda the Democratic Party elites are pushing,” Senators Tom McInnis (R-Richmond) and Brent Jackson (R-Sampson) said in a press release.