North Carolinians Against Gun Violence is trying to convince people that their laws would have stopped the Tucson Shooter. I’d be willing to bet money they would have issued. He could keep himself together long enough to plan, and acquire weapons. While North Carolina law enforcement do have discretion, my understanding is if you’re legally qualified to own a gun they will issue. This guy had nothing in his record that would have disqualified him.
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While CCW is shall issue in North Carolina purchase permits for handguns are not. The local Sheriff has discretion in whether is issue permits based on what comes up in the background check. That’s going to vary from county to county based on the depth of the check and there is no guarantee a Loughner wouldn’t slip through. It also doesn’t prevent a nut from buying a gun from a private seller who doesn’t care if a permit is required. It doesn’t prevent a nut from buying a long gun where no permit is required and the NICS check is the same as in Arizona. In this case, for all practical purposes, NCGV are, as usual, full of it.
I agree with Kahr40 on this. When I needed to get a pistol purchase permit in my county, it was no big deal and I could get as many as I wanted (and would pay for). Some counties make you jump through more hoops and get character references (Forsyth County did this at one time if memory serves).
It should be noted that this law dates from 1919. Back then “good moral character” meant you were white. Bad moral character meant you were African-American. Democrats in North Carolina at the beginning of the 20th Century worked very hard at finding ways to both segregate and subjugate blacks.
From the Wiki bio of Gov. Charles Brantley Aycock (1901-1905):
“Often overlooked was Aycock’s role as a leading spokesman in the white supremacy campaigns of 1898 and 1900, which historians say were marked by widespread violence, voter intimidation, voter fraud and even a coup d’état of the government of Wilmington. … The campaigns had far-reaching consequences: Blacks were removed from the voter rolls based on literacy tests, Jim Crow customs were encoded into law, and the Democratic Party controlled Tar Heel politics for two-thirds of the 20th century.”
So he would have bought an evil assault rifle or shotgun and probably killed more people.
What NCGV are so feverishly defending is a Jim Crow law.
In NC instead of abolishing the Jim Crow pistol purchase permit scheme, they just made it apply across the board.
Regardless, the Sheriff’s Department would almost certainly have issued the purchase permit, which is the required check. Once you have it you can basically buy the pistol with no NICS check since the purchase permit satisfies the requirement.
NCGV are simply making their dying gasps.
He could have easily passed even the California requirement (a short, multiple-choice test) to get a Handgun Safety Certificate and purchase whatever guns he wanted – except for the 30-rounder magazines. He would have been limited to ten-rounders, but he could have carried three guns and done a “New York” reload.
Quote from the article: “The Guilford County Sheriff’s Office received 42 applications for pistol purchase permits from Saturday through Wednesday, Bruce said. By comparison, the office received 77 during the same time period last year, he said.”
The Governor of NC declared a state of emergency on Monday. Even though this declaration did not trigger a ban on the sale of firearms (http://www.governor.state.nc.us/NewsItems/ExecutiveOrderDetail.aspx?newsItemID=1617) since wording in the declaration excluded that law. Most members of the public may have thought otherwise and decided to delay their purchase until after the state of emergency ended.
By law, statute 14-288.7 automatically goes into effect there’s a state of emergency, and prohibits the transportation, purchase sale and possession of firearms other than on one’s own premises.
So these numbers may not be very telling.
He wasn’t legal to purchase, and committed a felony to obtain the firearm:
http://robdoar.com/jared-loughner-did-not-legally-obtain-a-gun/
Deprivation of Rights without due process? That sounds like a nice lawsuit – the hard part will be getting a good Plaintiff for the first one.
Also, they’re not actually saying NC’s laws would have stopped him, or even that he couldn’t have gotten a gun anyway, just that he would have had to break another law to do it.
Let’s make murder even more illegaler!!!
Loughner was crazy like a fox. If he was truly nuts, he might have attacked the Congresswoman with a BB gun, or an airsoft gun or some other ridiculous substitute for a real weapon.
He knew exactly what he was doing and he pulled it off very efficiently. With his choice of weapon and tactics, he couldn’t have done it any better than if he was a government-trained assassin.
He was smart enough to have been able to walk around any and every law that was in place or might have been in place. Criminals have guns even where guns are totally banned. He had all the time in the world to get one, even if it took him a year or more. We are lucky that he did not build a truck bomb.
If someone cannot be trusted with weapons, why do we allow them to remain a threat to us by not locking them up? Ordinary kitchen knives are perfectly deadly, and utterly accessible to anyone who wants to go around slitting throats.
The murder weapon should never be the issue; the issue should always be the murderer who misused the weapon, and that is where the post-incident focus should properly be directed.
Hinckley was out having picnics with his family after shooting the President. What is Loughner going to get for shooting a Congresswoman? A trip to f****** Disneyland?