Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The Stanly County Commissioners will consider the approval of a resolution declaring Stanly County a Second Amendment sanctuary during their meeting Tuesday.

The resolution will be presented to the board by Vice Chairman Ashley Morgan, who helped lead the effort to draft the resolution. He recently met with Sheriff Jeff Crisco to talk about the resolution and get his opinion on the idea.

“It’s going to be big,” Morgan said about the resolution. “I believe in our gun rights.”

Morgan thinks the resolution will pass and has already talked with the commissioners who he says are on board with it.

In the resolution, the board of county commissioners “implores the North Carolina Legislature and the United States Congress to preserve, uphold, and protect the rights of all law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms under the United States Constitution and North Carolina Constitution and further implores the North Carolina Legislature and the United States Congress to reject any provision, law, or regulation that may infringe, have the tendency to infringe, or place any additional burdens on the right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms.”

Local governments across the state and the country have passed Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions. So far, according to news reports, 11 counties in N.C. have passed similar resolutions, including Cherokee, Cleveland, Davidson, Lincoln, McDowell, Pitt, Rowan, Rutherford, Stokes, Surry and Wilkes. Cabarrus is expected to vote on it Tuesday as well.

Crisco, who has been in communication with other sheriffs in the area who have adopted similar resolutions, said the discussion around making Stanly County a sanctuary stems from the Virginia legislature, which took control of both chambers of the statehouse last November, recently working to introduce stronger gun control legislation.

Since taking office this month, the Democratic majority in Virginia approved a ban on guns at the state capitol and introduced several bills to regulate gun ownership, including universal background checks, a ban on military-style rifles and a bill that would allow authorities to temporarily take guns from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others, according to news reports. Thousands of gun rights supporters are expected to rally next week against stricter gun control laws.

“It’s my understanding the fear of the people in Virginia is it’s the first step of the government going around to start collecting their guns, whether they’re legal law-abiding citizens or not,” Crisco said.

The resolution will simply affirm the citizens of the county know that the county commissioners and sheriff are standing up for the Constitution and the rights of the people enshrined in it, Crisco said.

“We as sheriffs swore to an oath to abide by the Constitution of the United States, primarily the Second Amendment,” Crisco said. “Until the Second Amendment is rewritten and/or taken away by the federal government, we will abide and protect the rights of the citizens of this county.”

If the federal or state government happened to ever pass a law banning assault rifles, or other types of military-style rifles, then Stanly would enforce the law “because that still does not infringe on the totality of your Second Amendment rights to bear arms” Crisco said. “That still gives you the right to have a hand gun, to have a hunting rifle.”

The meeting will be 6 p.m. at the Commissioners Meeting Room in the Stanly County Commons.