Gun rights groups are cheering the destruction of an 80-year-old registry of gun owners in Durham County, N.C.
A law passed this summer abolished the county registry: the only one in the state of North Carolina. It contained thousands of registrations, dating back to 1935. After the registry was discontinued this year, it became unclear who actually controlled the archive.
"Any conceivable interested party that could, to the best of my thinking, claim ownership or the right to ownership of these records -- they all disavowed interest in them and they were all essentially orphaned records or abandoned," said Durham County Clerk of Courts, Archie Smith.
http://youtu.be/-tb6BC-y8yI
This video of the shredding is making its way onto guns rights blogs around the Internet.
"Granted, this video isn’t terribly exciting from a video perspective, but from a freedom perspective it is awesome," writes Bob Owens at BearingArms.com. "It was nice of the Durham Sheriff’s Department to record the process for posterity as we continue to reclaim our gun rights here in North Carolina."
Archie Smith said it took as long as three hours and as many as 30 bags to destroy and contain the records.
Grass Roots North Carolina, a pro-firearms group, hadthreatened legal action if the records were not destroyed.