So many citizens of the Tar Heel state have rushed to order their Confederate flag license plates that the North Carolina DMV has run out of the tags, officials report.
Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman Mike Charbonneau reported that in the last 10 days the department has received a whole nine-months- worth of orders for the tags featuring a Sons of Confederate Veterans Logo.
The N.C. DMV says that it will be at least 30 days before the plates will be back in stock.
The rush of orders came on the heels of N.C. Governor Pat McCrory’s claims that he’d like the legislature to end the issuance of the Confederate flag plates.
At the end of June, the Governor urged the legislature to pass a law to end the official designation of “civic club” for the Sons of Confederate Veterans organization and to stop issuing plates with the C.S. flag emblazoned on them.
But looking to avoid being involved in making such a decision, the legislature shot back that the governor has the executive power to make the decision on his own if he wanted to.
The governor, though, has disputed that interpretation, and his office insists that “a legislative fix is required to discontinue the plates.”
The Sons of Confederate Veterans, a non-profit civic club, has criticized the governor’s move. The commander of the N.C. Sons of Confederate Veterans, J. Daniel Bolick, said the plate ban is an “insult.”
“The idea that if the Confederate flag is removed from public view then this type of crime will cease is an insult to Southerners and all Americans. Further, if one were to assume Confederate memorials contribute to such atrocities then it stands to reason the entire Southland would be a bloodbath due to the prevalence of such symbols,” he wrote on the club’s Facebook page.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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