Gun Trade World - June 2023

NORTH CAROLINA’S
LEGISLATURE HAS
OPPORTUNITY TO
RIGHT A WRONG
By Larry Keane, SVP for Government & Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel, NSSF.
North Carolina’s
General Assembly
is at a decision
point. It can vote
to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s
veto of a bill to repeal a Jim
Crow-era law requiring a
permit-to-purchase a pistol.
Or it can allow the governor’s
appeasement of special interest
gun control groups to keep
a law, rooted in racism, in
place. This law was designed
to deprive North Carolinians
of their Second Amendment
rights, especially African
Americans.
Gov. Cooper vetoed North
Carolina’s Senate Bill 41.
That’s legislation that would
repeal the state’s outdated
requirement for citizens to
obtain a pistol purchase permit
from their local sheriff before
they could legally purchase
a handgun from a federally
licensed firearm retailer. Given
the advances in technology and
the background check process,
a permit-to-purchase a pistol
is redundant and unnecessary.
The FBI’s National Instant
Criminal Background Check
System (NICS) provides an
almost instant and up-to-date
background check for firearm
retailers on those customers
wishing to purchase a firearm.
The NICS system is used
across the country to verify
that firearms sold at retail are
only transferred to those in
good standing with the law.
Century-old discriminatory
law
North Carolina’s permit-topurchase
law is 104 years old,
enacted in 1919. The law
requires county sheriffs to
approve permits for handgun
buyers to obtain and undergo
a background check. It also
requires sheriffs to evaluate a
“good moral character.”
That subjective requirement is
problematic
“(The law) was actually
facilitated for the denial
of handguns to African
Americans,” said state Sen.
Jim Perry, one of the bill’s
sponsors.
He explained that when the
laws were enacted in 1919,
in order to obtain a handgun
permit, a sheriff would
have to declare a person as
of “good moral character,”
according to The Daily Tar
Heel.
“That’s too much arbitrary
power for anyone to have,”
Perry said.
That subjective
requirement is also
Constitutionally specious.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s
Bruen decision struck down
New York’s concealed carry
permitting law that relied
on authorities evaluating
character. Gov. Cooper
relied on the state’s ability
to evaluate character when
he vetoed the legislation
repealing the state’s pistol
permitting requirements.
The governor’s statement
claimed that sheriffs need to
be able “refuse a permit based
on signs of mental illness,
domestic abuse incidents that
might not be captured in a
national database, or other
26 www.guntradeworld.com