Video of pro- speaker at council meeting goes viral BY MARGARET MOFFETT margaret.moffett@greensboro.com A video from last week's Greensboro City Council meeting has gone viral. The last time that happened was let's see ... never. Speaker Mark Robinson's comments to council members April 3, in which he passionately supported gun rights, now have been viewed by millions. A link on U.S. Rep. Mark Walker's Facebook page received more than 3 million hits alone. Robinson was one of a dozen people who spoke that night about gun rights, most of whom wanted stricter laws. But Robinson's was the only speech to go viral. "The majority of people in this city are law abiding," he said, "and they follow the law and they want their constitutional right to bear arms." "I am the majority! A law-abiding citizen who's never shot anybody, never committed a serious crime, never committed a felony! "I've never done anything like that, but it seems like every time we have one of these shootnobody wants to put A weekly column ings, the blame where it goes, and civic scene in shooter's the Triad and the which is at the feet. You want to put it at my feet!" The National Rifle Association sent the video to mainstream media outlets in a press release, saying the "mainstream media's obsession with the gun control lobby has quashed the voices of Americans who support the constitutional right to self-defense." What got Robinson so riled? A suggestion by Mayor Nancy Vaughan in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting in February that the city cancel the gun show at the city-owned Greensboro Coliseum. The issue was a moot point by the time Robinson and others spoke last week. City Attorney Tom Carruthers told council members in March that state law makes it just about impossible to cancel such shows. The council voted instead to donate the money it made off the gun show to Gun Stoppers, a program that gets illegal guns off the street. ••• Mark McDaniel's one-man war against the service sales tax continues. McDaniel, who is challenging N.C. Rep. Jon Hardister in the District 59 Republican primary, has made it the sole platform of his campaign. Since February 2016, North Carolinians have paid tax on labor every- Facebook Mark Robinson speaking at the Greensboro City Council meeting last week. thing from repairs to maintenance and installations. McDaniel calls the Republican-led measure a "misery tax," hitting people at their worst. And he remains convinced that Republican legislators in Raleigh next will propose expanding the sales tax to health care. McDaniel said last week that his campaign Inside did some telephone hundred polling. Three callers were asked, "To lower your income tax rate, would you support a devoted to the political tax on health care?" Guilford County, According to McDanstate. iel, pollsters heard 300 "no's." He said if Republicans don't stop adding new taxes, then the GOP will have to change its symbol from the elephant to the woolly mammoth "because we'll be just as extinct." The primary election is May 8. Speaking of McDaniel and taxes, a reader recently reminded Scoop that when McDaniel was a state senator representing Forsyth County, he supported holding a voter referendum on a 1-cent sales tax on food. The tax, which would have been levied in Guilford and Forsyth counties, would have raised money for a professional baseball stadium in the Triad. McDaniel was a leading proponent of bringing the Minnesota Twins to the Triad. Restaurant owners strongly opposed the tax hike. "This bill is a vote to allow a vote. The public will make the final judgment on this issue," McDaniel told the News & Record in a July 1997 article. Yes, McDaniel said last week. He did. And he says he'd make the same vote again today. Voters should have the power to accept or reject such a measure, he said. Incidentally, they rejected the food tax in 1998. Boy, did they ever reject it. Contact Margaret Moffett at 336-373-7031 and follow @MargaretMoffett on Twitter.