There have been 36 mass shootings nationwide since Jan. 30. Two of those incidents occurred in our state — two dead, two injured in a Durham shooting on Jan. 31, four people injured in a drive-by shooting in Laurinburg on Feb. 8.
Jan. 30 was the day North Carolina Sens. Danny Britt, Warren Daniel and Jim Perry filed a bill to ease gun regulations in North Carolina. The Senate bill and its House equivalent were collectively sponsored by 51 North Carolina Republicans and one Democrat (Michael Wray, who ultimately voted against the House bill). On Feb. 22, the House’s bill passed along party lines. The Senate version passed a vote the week before.
Currently, purchasing a handgun in North Carolina requires interested buyers to obtain a permit from their sheriff’s office. There, the sheriff performs a background check, which amounts to a look at the applicant’s criminal history, affidavits that confirm the applicant has “good moral character,” and a confirmation that the applicant only wants to buy a handgun for protection, hunting or collecting. If sheriffs deny someone a permit, they must keep a record of it.
The proposed legislation would do away with all of this — instead of a check into the character of an applicant, where a mental health evaluation may be necessary, the process would consist of a database search that reduces the buyer to any legal trouble they have run into in the past.
Removing the sheriff’s background check gets rid of an additional safety net that can catch red flags better than a computer — after all, there are a lot of people who show signs of mental illness that wouldn’t necessarily show up on the national database. This legislation doesn’t just weaken our state’s protections against mass shootings and gun violence — removing background checks that address mental illness also will inevitably lead to more suicides, as death by firearm is the most common method of suicide.
When Connecticut implemented a permit-to-purchase law in the 1990s, it led to a 40% decrease in homicides and a 15.4% decrease in firearm suicides. When Missouri repealed its permit-to-purchase law in the 2000s, one study found that it led to a 25% increase in firearm deaths and a 16.1% increase in firearm suicides. And, as the founder of the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center put it in one study, the forced interaction with law enforcement likely served as a disincentive for people who wanted to commit violence with their firearm.
Republicans say they want to change the current law because there was not a strong national background check program when this legislation initially passed in 1957. Now, when interested buyers go to a gun store, they also undergo a background check through a national database, which the bill’s supporters claim makes the sheriff’s permit unnecessary.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it leaves no room for error. Something as small as uploading a case incorrectly could mean a person passes their national background check easily, whereas the North Carolina system requires sheriff’s offices to thumb through their own records, plus reach out to the offices of any other county that an applicant has lived in. It’s a tedious process; it’s also a process that can pick up local domestic abuse calls and other calls to police that wouldn’t necessarily involve going to court.
Removing that in-person check on mental health also contradicts a favorite talking point of Second Amendment advocates: that the issue with gun violence isn’t guns, really, but mental health that needs to be addressed.
Current North Carolina laws already are inadequate tools against gun violence. The permitting system only applies to pistols, not shotguns or rifles. People lie on their applications. People hide signs of mental illness. Sheriffs may not always do their due diligence. Plus, there will still be gun shows in neighboring states, sales among individuals and stolen guns that circumvent the background check program entirely.
But an imperfect, multi-step system is better than something significantly less. What North Carolina — and every state — needs are more safeguards.
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