Militias in North Carolina

In May of this year I wrote a blog post about protesters and demonstrators carrying firearms at their events. In the months since that post, a variation of that conduct has begun happening more frequently: armed militias showing up at other groups' events, either as supporters or as opponents. The recent events in Kenosha have brought renewed media attention to this issue, but incidents involving armed militias have occurred all across the country this summer (see a few examples here, here, here, and here). Lately I've been asked if these types of private militias are legal in North Carolina, and if so, whether they are permitted to "deploy" to protests as participants or security? This post provides a summary of the relevant statutes and the criminal offenses that may apply. Is This Happening in North Carolina? I don't have first-hand knowledge about the movement, but in 2019 the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that militias and related anti-government groups in the U.S. numbered well into the hundreds, including 20 groups operating in North Carolina. A surge of militia activity back in the 1990's was followed by a decline over the next couple decades, but the number of militias appears to be rising again this year in reaction to the "threads of the modern American experience that for months have been pulled with increasing tension," as Chris Tyner eloquently put it in last week's News Roundup. Social media companies like Facebook have begun disabling the pages of militia groups, making it more [...]