Ditzy News & Observer Editors Attack N.C. Constitutional Carry Bill

The Raleigh (NC) News & Observer has a long and infamous history of being on the wrong side of history for more than a century. This includes overt support for the Ku Klux Klan and even helping foment the only successful coup d’état on a lawfully-elected government in American history. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that they’re on the wrong side of history again in an unsigned editorial attacking a just-proposed bill to add North Carolina to the rapidly-growing list of “constitutional carry” states where citizens can assert their natural right to self-defense without a government-issued permission slip.

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A proposed bill from 10 Republicans in the General Assembly to remove North Carolina’s concealed-carry permit requirement for handguns has the odor of a gun-lobby sponsored maneuver. There’s no other way to say it: the idea is absurd, and dangerous. One hopes GOP leaders will stop this idea before it goes any further.

Goofy measures like this one usually get put away by party leaders, but in this environment, who knows?

Basically, the proposal would remove the requirement, with some exceptions and footnotes. The very complexity of those things shows how ludicrous the bill is. For example, concealed carry permits wouldn’t be required anymore, except it would still be illegal to carry a concealed handgun at a parade or funeral, in a place where alcohol is sold and consumed, while drinking alcohol, on picket lines and at certain demonstrations — and this is interesting — on the grounds of the State Capitol, Governor’s Mansion or the governor’s western residence in the mountains.

Anything that loosens already minimal gun laws should not be enacted. North Caroilna [sic] gun owners, and there are tens of thousands of them, can indulge their fancy for guns at a multitude of ranges, with hunting, collecting and other gun-connected pastimes. Asking those who want to carry concealed weapons to get a permit to do so is hardly a great burden, especially considering the risk of a gun in the wrong hands.

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It’s always fascinating when a newspaper’s editorial board attempts to write an editorial when they clearly don’t have any first-hand knowledge about the subject area at all, and the editorial board of the News & Observer clearly has as much business opining on this issue as they do on cardiac surgery techniques.
It’s bad enough they can’t be bothered to do basic research about North Carolina’s existing gun laws—it is indeed legal to carry concealed in a restaurant where alcohol is sold and consumed, for example—but they can’t even be bothered to even learn how many gun owners there are in the state, which is more than “tens of thousands” (out of a population of more than ten million, there are an estimated 4 million or more gun owners, and roughly 600,000 licensed concealed carriers).
Nor can they seem to grasp that the carrying of a firearm is an innate natural right to self defense, a concept that dates back to long before the founding of our nation.
They also amusingly think that North Carolina’s current concealed carry classes provide firearms training, when, in fact, it is nothing more than a certification that course-takers can hit a large, stationary silhouette target 21 of 30 times from very close range (ten shots each at 3, 5, and 7 yards), routinely passed with “perfect” scores by people who have never fired a handgun before taking the class.
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The simple fact of the matter is that the course currently mandated by the state of North Carolina does not have any effect whatsoever on guns “getting into the wrong hands,” which they would know if they bothered to read the stories of serial felons who are prohibited by law from owning firearms routinely gunning one another down in Raleigh and nearby Durham published in their own paper with boring regularity.
No one who actually understands the North Carolina permitting process and required class thinks that it impacts felons acquiring firearms for use in crime. Criminals acquire their firearms through the black market and via theft, and do not take a state-mandated course to go heeled. Only the law-abiding are presently saddled with that burden.

All it serves to do is provide a cursory overview of the state’s gun laws, which are mostly forgotten in a few weeks, and a shooting certification that is so simple that I just aced it shooting a snub-nosed Ruger LCR revolver in .327 Federal Magnum, having never fired the revolver or that cartridge before.

Bob NC concealed carry qual Ruger LCR 327
Remember… you only have to hit somewhere on the target, and I haven’t fired a revolver of any kind in over two years.
Bob NC Concealed Carry Qual 327 LCR
The editorial board of the News & Observer is once again standing in the way of liberty and progress for the citizens of North Carolina, as they so often do.
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Perhaps they should stick with writing on subjects they know something about… if there is such a thing.

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