GRNC:

To GRNC supporters from GRNC president Paul Valone:

The good news is that, at least for now, you have won a great victory. The Proposed Committee Substitute (PCS) for S90 has been pulled from the Judiciary Committee calendar and will not be considered tomorrow. If you had planned to attend the meeting, please do not go… at least for now.

It has come to our attention that Senator Dan Britt has been responding to the many respondents to GRNC’s alert by telling them we are incorrect about the bill. At least initially, Sen. Britt apparently didn’t understand his own bill… perhaps because it was the NC Sheriff’s Association that fed him a bill of goods. Now that he apparently understands the problem, he has professed the best of intentions. We will take him at his word.

Why Sen. Britt was wrong about the S90 PCS
In its current form, the S90 PCS would indeed make concealed handgun permits discretionary by adding essentially the same subjective “good moral character” clause which sheriffs have been using to arbitrarily deny pistol purchase permits for many decades. It would do so under a new GS 14-415(a1)(2) by requiring applicants for concealed handgun permits (which it now calls “Class A” permits) to also qualify for pistol purchase permits (renamed “Class B” permits).

The language is, at best, vague. We can argue forever whether its vagueness limits or actually expands sheriffs’ arbitrary “discretion,” the bottom line is this: 1919 Jim Crow language originally intended to deny guns to blacks has no place in modern statutes, and especially not in a hugely successful “shall-issue” concealed handgun statute which GRNC got passed back in 1995, and which has produced a huge plummet in NC violent crime ever since.

Why a ‘fix’ won’t work
We appreciate that Sen. Britt has offered to “fix” the language to remove the “moral character” clause from the concealed handgun language. While a nice gesture, doing so fails to address the problem that the S90 PCS is flawed not only in execution, but in concept.

The portion of the PCS dealing with pistol purchase permits (a/k/a “Class B” permits) purports to be an improvement because it “authorizes” (yes, “authorizes”) applicants to purchase as many handguns as they want over 5 years for a higher $25 fee. Ignoring for a moment, that “authorizing” handgun purchases turns a right into a privilege, and that people of lesser means, who can afford only one defensive handgun now experience a 500% “tax increase” (from $5 to $25) to buy a single handgun, please consider the following.

Six years ago, thanks to the efforts of GRNC and then-Sen. Buck Newton, as part of restaurant carry bill H937, the NC Senate voted to repeal our Jim Crow pistol purchase law in favor of point-of-sale checks as done in nearly all other states. Unfortunately, when the bill was sent to the House, then-Speaker Thom Tillis insisted the measure be removed.

By contrast, what the NC Senate is doing now is to cement our Jim Crow purchase permit law permanently in place, permanently enshrining it in such a way to make full repeal all but impossible. It is often said that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” In this case, the mediocre is the enemy of the morally just.

Sheriffs association: All about money and power
At issue is the role of the NC Sheriffs’ Association (NCSA) in this debacle. By all indications, they wanted the “moral character” clause added to concealed handgun permits and were, perhaps, disingenuous in their negotiations with Senate bill sponsors.

As GRNC VP Don Pomeroy notes, in at least its original form, the PCS lines the pockets of NC sheriffs while hanging the NC Department of Public Safety out to dry.  Language in this bill would strip 100% of the permit fees currently shared with NCDPS and create a cash windfall by giving that money to sheriffs increasing their current share of the permit fees by over 100%.

Moreover, the PCS would have given sheriffs power over to whom they issued either pistol purchase permits or concealed handgun permits… if they issued such permits at all.

The second you turn your head, the communists are at it again.  They never sleep, do they?  There isn’t a single God-given right you have they wouldn’t take to themselves if they could, there isn’t a single dollar you or anyone else has that they wouldn’t take if they could, and there isn’t a single bureaucratic machine they don’t like.

That’s right.  Your single guess was good enough, and you got it right.  North Carolina CLEOs and the Sheriff’s association.

Or in other words, the communists.

Thanks to Paul Valone and GRNC for their diligent work on this and similar issues.  We’d be in a pickle without them.