How do I learn a North Carolina General Statute’s legislative history?

In a previous blog post, I wrote about an inquiry we received at the School of Government about North Carolina General Statute Section 14-51, reproduced below. In that post, I addressed how to find the elements (what must be proven) of burglary. In this post, I will talk about how to find the legislative history of this, and any, statute. If you’re looking for statutes online, I find it best to go to the North Carolina General Assembly’s website. It’s free, very accurate, and you can search for words or citations. Since 1943, North Carolina’s code of statutes that generally apply across the state has been called the “General Statutes.” Before then, codes had different names, and I’ll touch on those later. For anyone new to reading statutes, the symbol § stand for section. The number in front of the dash stands for the statutory chapter where the statute can be found (here, Chapter 14, which includes most general non motor vehicle or drug criminal offenses) and the number after the dash is the particular section of the chapter. Statutes are organized in numerical order, so this statute can be found in a physical book of statutes after G.S. 14-50.43 and before G.S. 14-51.1. To refresh the original question, our inquirer read this statute and said something like this: “The statute doesn’t include the element of ‘at night’ that I thought was an element of burglary. Aren’t all the elements of the offenses of first and second degree burglary listed in [...]