On Wednesday, we reported on a North Carolina bill that seeks to create a roster of firearms approved for sale in the state. The roster is based on one already in place in California that has severely limited the number of guns available to law-abiding citizens. It does not, however, stop criminals from doing whatever they can to obtain other firearms.

However, the representative who is pushing for this plan and the media seem to be trying to push this through as a safety measure, one meant to keep North Carolinians safe from faulty weapons.

In a story titled, “Can N.C. ensure ‘safe’ guns? Democrats want to ban handguns with dangerous design flaws,” the Charlotte Observer seems poised to push the narrative that this is somehow a safety measure.

A trio of Democrats want North Carolina to follow California’s footsteps in governing gun safety.

The “Ensure Safe Handguns” bill instructs the N.C. Department of Public Safety to prohibit the use of handguns that have design flaws endangering users. The bill instructs the department to use California’s Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale as a model.

California has prohibited the sale of hundreds of handguns, affecting popular brands like Beretta, Colt and Smith & Wesson.

The department would conduct firing and other tests to determine which firearms are unsafe. Antiques, theater props and guns designed for use in the Olympic Games would be exempt from testing.

State Rep. Verla Insko of Chapel Hill, the Democratic House whip, referred to the proposal as a common-sense solution to an uncommon but deadly problem.

“I grew up in a hunting, gun owner family and had a brother who was a gunsmith and gun shop owner. Gun safety was a very high priority. Misfires are uncommon; but they can be deadly,” Insko said. “I heard of one recently in Orange County that involved a law enforcement officer’s handgun, a gun that would surely be on the approved list.”

The Observer does provide some contrary opinions on Insko’s bill, but not on this particular argument Insko is trying to push, namely that the registry he’s proposing is a safety measure.

The thing is, the California law it’s based on makes no such claim. It’s a gun control bill, and this one is too. The fact is, we don’t need any government determining what guns are safe and which ones aren’t. The market does a pretty good job of that one. It doesn’t take long before word of a fault firearm spreads far and wide thanks to the internet, which means the weapon is either fixed or removed from the market.

But that’s not what this is about, and it never was. Insko doesn’t care about keeping people safe or anything of the sort. Just a look at his positions makes it clear that his endgame is to make it impossible for private citizens to purchase firearms.

His claims about it being more of a consumer protection bill are nothing but smoke and mirrors; a shiny object meant to distract the easily gullible in the electorate.

Anyone with half a brain knows damn good and well what this bill is, and the Observer owed it to its readers to be a bit more critical in its reporting.