RALEIGH, N.C. — The North Carolina Senate voted Tuesday along party lines to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of gun rights legislation that includes a repeal of the state’s permit requirement for buying handguns.
Cooper, a Democrat who is currently serving the final two years of his second term, vetoed Senate Bill 41 Friday after it cleared the GOP-controlled legislature earlier this month. On Tuesday, a motion to override Cooper’s veto passed the Senate 30 to 19, with all Republicans voting in favor and all Democrats opposed.
Support for the bill, particularly the pistol purchase permit repeal, has mostly fallen along party lines. Republicans argue the permitting system is outdated and an unnecessary infringement on Second Amendment rights. Nearly all Democrats argue that it makes little sense to remove an existing safeguard that helps law enforcement keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.
Gun safety advocates, during various debates over the past two months, have said that repealing the permit law, which requires anyone buying a handgun in North Carolina to first obtain a permit from their local sheriff’s office, is a mistake and will create a potentially dangerous loophole for private sales.
After the shooting Monday at the Covenant School, a private religious elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, that left six people dead, including three 9-year-old students, Cooper criticized GOP lawmakers for moving ahead with the override vote, calling it “outrageous” that Republicans wanted to “eliminate strong N.C. background checks and make it easier for dangerous people to buy guns and take them on some school grounds.”
Republican bill sponsors have pushed back against the notion that the permit law is necessary, and say that the vast majority of people applying for permits are law-abiding citizens — not criminals or others intending to commit gun violence — who shouldn’t need to go through an “arbitrary” process of getting approval from their sheriff’s office.
Sen. Danny Britt, a Lumberton Republican and one of the bill’s primary sponsors, said Tuesday that SB 41 would protect gun rights and wouldn’t make communities less safe. He also challenged the idea that the bill would’ve had any bearing on a shooting like the one in Nashville.
On the other hand, Britt said, one of the other measures in the bill — which would allow people attending religious services at places of worship that also serve as schools, or have attached schools, to carry guns — would make it easier for church-goers and other worshipers to protect themselves.
“I would hope that no one uses the tragedy that occurred in Nashville to score political points,” Britt said on the Senate floor. “What we’re doing in this bill would not impact the situation in Nashville. What we’re doing in this bill would not make people less safe.”
Sen. Sydney Batch, a Democrat from Apex, spoke against the bill. Batch said despite being a gun-owner herself, she was opposed to repealing the permit law, especially because of the loophole that could allow people who have committed crimes to obtain guns through private sales that don’t require a federal background check.
“This isn’t scoring political points,” Batch said. “This is a personal experience that I and thousands of parents across the state worry about.”
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