North Carolina is kind of strange for a southern state. They have a history of having some strangely anti-gun laws still on the books. At one time, that wasn’t weird at all. The South had a lot of those on the books, mostly because of Jim Crow.

Some carry laws, among others, were kind of draconian and North Carolina has been a bit slower in repealing some of those than some other states.

Which is good.

However, an new proposal is causing some concern. It deals with concealed carry classes, and it’s a problem.

The changes would require the state’s 2,600 concealed carry instructors to perform additional documentation and audits on their students and classes.

…

North Carolina Concealed Carry Instructors Association President Harvey Morse says the instructors should not be required to pay for some course material, or share certain information with state authorities.

“They wanted us to give a list of everybody’s name, address, email information, phone number to the state for the state to presumably create their own database. And we were refusing to do that. It’s personal whether somebody wants to take an instructor’s course, whether they get a permit or not. I mean, some people just take the course for educational purposes, not necessarily to even get a permit,” he said.

Opponents of the measure argue that it’ll make things far more difficult and expensive for concealed carry instructors and drive up the cost for the classes themselves.

And even if that weren’t the case, what they’re asking for is bizarre.

Now, when it comes to carry laws, I’ve always opposed training requirements. Part of it is because of stuff like this. Once you have such a law in place, tweaking it becomes far easier. For example, in a vacuum, the idea of giving the state the information of people who completed the course may not sound that bad. Especially as it’s required for a carry permit. This way people can’t fake their way into one.

But we can’t look at it in a vacuum. We have to look at everything and how various things interact.

By making it more difficult on these instructors, they’ll likely push many out of the business entirely. A lot of these guys do training classes on the side. This isn’t their main line of work. The more of a pain you make it for them to do this, the more likely they’ll be to walk away.

That will reduce the number of instructors, thus making it harder for law-abiding citizens to get the required training. It’ll also be another factor that will drive up the cost of instruction.

As a result, this seemingly minor change in the carry laws in North Carolina could have significant impact, depriving an untold number of folks of the ability to get a concealed carry permit.

And for what? The bad guys aren’t exactly known for trying to carry lawfully. They’re going to carry regardless, so why do this?

The answer is that they don’t trust good people. They think we’re all incompetent or criminals and they want to make things difficult for us.

I’m just glad these people aren’t voting on laws in my state.