CHARLOTTE -- Paul Helmke and Kathy Patterson will be among lonely voices when 70,000 members of the National Rifle Association gather this week at the Charlotte Convention Center.
Helmke is president of the Washington-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Patterson is a mother of two who helped organize a group to limit gun use in her Wesley Chapel neighborhood in Union County.
Each will play a role in events aimed at offering another side to the gun issue in North Carolina and across the country.
On Wednesday, preparations continued for what will be Charlotte's largest convention ever.
The red-white-and-blue themed gathering opens today and continues Friday with speeches by, among others, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and actor Chuck Norris; FOX pundit Glenn Beck headlines a Saturday event.
Shortly before Palin's speech, Helmke will take the stage at the City Club to debate Alan Gura, the lawyer who in 2008 won a landmark gun rights case at the U.S. Supreme Court and is lead counsel in another case challenging local gun control laws.
The Brady Center released a poll Wednesday showing that a narrow majority of Americans - and a larger majority of women - oppose people carrying loaded guns openly in public, a policy supported by the NRA.
"The NRA leadership is increasingly out of touch with their membership and the general public," Helmke said.
"When the NRA's agenda means saying even if you're on the terror watch list, and the Justice Department feels that you're a danger, you should be able to buy a gun, it's an indication to me that they've gone too far. And I think their membership would say the same thing."
Last week, after the failed Times Square car bombing, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was among those who asked Congress to support a ban that stops anyone on terrorist watch lists from legally buying guns and explosives. The NRA opposed the ban.
"We think its wrong for a secret list to be used as basically judge and jury when it comes to basically denying people their constitutional rights," NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said Wednesday.
Saturday morning, Kathy Patterson will join a forum on preventing gun violence at St. Peter's Catholic Church, across the street from the convention.
Roxane Kolar, executive director of the Durham-based North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, said the gathering is not a counter-protest to the NRA.
"We don't protest the right to own guns and gunowners," she said. "We work with them. This is simply another option for people who want to prevent gun violence."
In 2008, firearms were used in more than 14,300 murders, robberies and aggravated assaults in North Carolina, according to FBI figures.
Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president, said this week that the problem is the lack of criminal prosecutions.
