Another One Bites the Dust…

There are a number of issues on which the North Carolina General Assembly can, occasionally at least, be a semi-reasonable place. Lawmakers have not, for instance, fallen all over themselves to restrict a woman's right to choose or to amend the Constitution to ban same sex marriage. Though badly flawed, the state's tax and revenue system is better than many and our state consumer laws are pretty darned good in many areas. Obviously, there are other ares in which the state excels (or at least does a good job). 

This year, depending upon how things turn out the next couple of weeks, it's pretty safe to say that lawmakers will have made some progress on voter registration, health insurance coverage for kids, those at high-risk, and persons with mental illness, and, maybe ethics reform. Legislators may even stand up to the macho posturing of the state's realtor lobby.

Having said all of this, one area in which legislative backbones have the strength and staying power of a stack cafeteria jello is in the area of guns. My colleague Chris Fitzsimon has already described how the NRA deep-sixed a 2005 proposal to merely STUDY the issue of illegal trafficking of handguns. Today, the group helped convince the Senate Judiciary II Committee to defeat an incredibly modest proposal sponsored by a law and order legislator that had, miraculously, passed the House earlier this year.

North Carolina law has long permitted sheriffs to deny handgun permits for a variety of reasons and directed them to do it for several others. The only problem with this is that if a sheriff denies a permit in one county, there's no way for a sheriff in another county to know that this has happened. The bill in question would have addressed this situation by simply requiring sheriffs to report such denials to a State Bureau of Investigation database.  The bill, which received the eloquent endorsement of Lisa Price with North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, even included provisions to assure that the database was not accessible to the public and to delete any entries after eight years as well as in any instance in which an applicant successfully appealed their denial of a permit.

Unfortunately, none of this was good enough for the NRA or the majority of the Senate J-II committee. The idea that North Carolina law enforcement officials might actually know about the fact that an applicant for a handgun permit had been denied last week in a neighboring county was too much of an infringement on the precious constitutional right to a well regulated militia bear arms. The bill lost on a voice vote.