Storyline · 1990–1994
In 1990 Joe Herzenberg asked Chapel Hill's town attorney to study local gun control, and the attorney reported that the town could not ban handgun sales. In April 1992 the Town Council adopted Herzenberg's ordinance barring guns on town property, at street fairs and on public transportation, and UNC banned concealed weapons in its Code of Student Conduct. After crowded hearings Chapel Hill adopted five more gun ordinances in November 1993, Carrboro formed a study committee, and in 1994 Buy Back the Hill bought about 100 guns from residents.
On February 12, 1990 council member Joe Herzenberg asked Chapel Hill town attorney Ralph Karpinos to research ways to regulate guns within the town limits; an NRA state liaison said the group would fight any ordinance. On March 26 Karpinos told the Town Council that the state constitution would not allow the town to ban the sale of handguns. His report summarized state and town rules, including the town's ban on firing guns within its limits, and the council discussed no further gun controls.
On April 13, 1992 the council unanimously adopted Herzenberg's ordinance barring firearms and other dangerous weapons on town property, at street fairs and on buses, taxis and other public transportation, places state law did not cover, with fines of $500. The ordinance also raised to $500 the fine for firing a gun inside the town limits. By April University officials had changed UNC's Code of Student Conduct to ban the possession of concealed weapons such as guns, knives, bombs and brass knuckles, effective August 19, 1992, with penalties from censure to expulsion left to the Honor Court. Assistant dean Jeffrey Cannon tied the change to a growing number of weapons incidents, including a gun fired into the Morrison Residence Hall lobby after a November 1991 dance.
On August 23, 1993 about 20 residents came to a Chapel Hill Town Council meeting to oppose a possible handgun ban, and before the council's hearing residents formed North Carolinians for Gun Control after a jogger was shot on Estes Drive in July. More than 300 people packed Town Hall for the hearing on September 7, and most of about 60 speakers opposed new limits; Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos advised that the town could not ban handguns outright but could bar guns at public assemblies, on downtown streets and in the hands of people using drugs or alcohol. On October 29 the Carrboro aldermen appointed seven residents to a committee with aldermen Jacquelyn Gist, Jay Bryan and Frances Shetley to review gun laws; it met first on November 15. After a last hearing on November 4, the Chapel Hill council voted unanimously on November 22 for five ordinances barring the display of firearms by anyone under the influence of alcohol or drugs, at polling places and at public assemblies, the display of small handguns in specified public areas, and the carrying of certain high-capacity semiautomatic weapons off one's own premises unless unloaded and packed away; they took effect December 1.
On January 28, 1994 police made the first charge under the ordinances, citing a driver stopped on West Franklin Street with a handgun on his dashboard, but on March 10 District Judge Stanley Peele dismissed the case, ruling that the arresting officer could not testify to what another person had seen. On March 15 the Chi Psi fraternity agreed to sponsor Buy Back the Hill, a program begun by council member Jim Protzman to buy guns from local owners. At the police station on May 7 and May 21 it paid $20 to $50 a gun and took in about 100; in July it gave $3,000 toward a police dog, and when its first phase closed in November it had collected 104 guns and raised more than $12,000.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are the most widely held histories of the theme it is filed under, so they may not discuss it. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Rick Jackson's true crime history of Chapel Hill, published by The History Press in 2023, in 28 short chapters. Cases include the Efland bank robbery, the execution of John Henry Breeze, the unsolved murder of Suellen Evans, the killing at the Internationalist Bookstore and the death of Eve Carson.
Albert Coates's own account of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, which he founded, subtitled 'out of a classroom in Chapel Hill' and published in 1981. The 303 pages trace the institute's history and its role in educating North Carolina's public officials.
Kemp Plummer Battle's memoir, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1945, 296 pages with plates and portraits. Battle, a lawyer, state treasurer and president of the university from 1876 to 1891, recalls North Carolina manners, customs and public life across the nineteenth century, with Chapel Hill and the university's reopening after Reconstruction at the center.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (1946), The Journal of Southern History (1946).
William J. Billingsley's history of the Speaker Ban Law, the 1963 North Carolina statute that barred known Communists from speaking on state campuses, and the fight over it at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The subtitle sets the scope: race, politics and the public university in sixties North Carolina. It treats academic freedom, anti-communist movements and free speech in the state. University of Georgia Press, 1999, 308 pages with eight pages of plates.
Reviewed in Academe (2000), The American Historical Review (2001), The Journal of Southern History (2001), Journal of American History (2001), The Journal of Politics (2001).
Francis Nash's history of Hillsborough in colonial and Revolutionary times, first published in 1903 and reprinted in 1953 by Edwards & Broughton with an index and a sketch of the author. Topics include the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771, the Revolution and local genealogy.
Howard E. Covington Jr.'s biography of Albert Coates (1896-1989), the law professor who founded the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina and led it through its early years. Topics include Coates as a law teacher and the institute's history as a center for the study of public administration in Chapel Hill. Published in 2010 by the University Library at Chapel Hill, 322 pages with 32 pages of plates.
Jean Bolduc's collection of oral history interviews with Black residents of Durham and Orange counties, published by The History Press in 2016, 125 pages with photographs and portraits. The narrators are the poet Jaki Shelton Green, civil rights lawyer Floyd McKissick, Walter Jackson, Nate Davis, Brenda Stephens, Diane Wright, Jackie Wagstaff and Michelle Johnson, and a closing chapter deals with the Ku Klux Klan. The interviews document Black life and race relations in the two counties across the twentieth century.
Abstracts of the minutes of Orange County's Inferior Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for 1777 to 1788, the county court of justices of the peace in the Revolutionary years. The abstracts name the people who came before the court. First published in Charlotte in 1966 and later reprinted from Greenville, South Carolina, in three paginated sections with a map.
David Cook collects the grim side of the Eno River's past in Orange and Durham counties: ghost stories, crimes, train wrecks and accidents, including the hanging of rebels near the river in 1771, a sawmill accident said to have started a run of hauntings, and a dance one Valentine's Day that ended badly. Published by The History Press in 2025, 141 pages with illustrations.
Rosalind Rosenberg's 2017 biography of Pauli Murray (1910-1985), lawyer, poet and Episcopal priest, raised in Durham. Its six parts follow a Southern childhood, the move to New York, the 1938 application to the University of North Carolina that was refused because Murray was Black (the chapter is titled 'Members of your race are not admitted'), law school and the coining of the phrase Jane Crow, the Cold War years, the push toward 'an NAACP for women', and a late-life ordination. 494 pages with portraits.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2018).
Deed transcripts for the town lots of Chapel Hill and adjoining land from 1790 to the 1930s, compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway. Each transcript keeps only the working facts: grantor and grantee, price, acreage and the metes and bounds of the parcel. Self-published in 2014 as Issue 1G, 702 pages with maps and facsimiles.
Nora Gaskin's short true account of a murder investigation in 1960s Chapel Hill and the judicial error that followed, centered on Frank Rinaldi (1929 to 2009). Published in 2013 by Lystra Books, 52 pages with references.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Gun rules in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and at UNC, 1990–1994.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/gun-rules-storyline-1990/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
