Making North Carolina Safer From Gun Violence
Mass shootings like those in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, NY break our hearts and galvanize us to act to stop the rampant gun violence. As Governor Cooper said in his passionate speech on May 25: "We need Republicans in North Carolina and across the country to come to the table and pass these bills [that protect our communities] ... Or we need to choose new leaders."
Although we have been spared mass shootings in North Carolina so far, we have still lost too many of our fellow citizens and too many of our young people to gun violence. According to the most recent statistics from Everytown, USA, in an average year, 1,470 people die in North Carolina and 3,407 are wounded by guns in North Carolina. Fifty-seven percent of those deaths are suicides.
North Carolina has the 17th highest rate of gun violence in the country, and our perception that it is getting worse is true, with an 88% increase in gun homicides and an 8% increase in gun suicides in our state between 2011 and 2020. This increase in deaths reflects the increase in guns over the same period, across the country. Data from the Small Arms Survey of Global Firearms reveals that in 2011 there were 88 guns per 100 civilians in the U.S. By 2018 the number was 120.5 per 100 civilians (an increase of 37%) -- a total of 393.3 million guns in this country. More guns per capita than anywhere else in the world! And it's even higher now: handgun background checks show an 80% increase from 2019 to 2020 — a result of increased insecurity brought on by the pandemic.
What can we do about it? According to a SurveyUSA poll conducted in June for WRAL, here's what North Carolina residents want our legislature to do:
90% support requiring a background check for all gun purchases, including those made at gun shows and online. (75% of gun owners support this!)
87% support allowing family members or law enforcement officers to temporarily suspend a person's access to guns if they have evidence that the person poses a significant threat to themselves or others, commonly called a “red flag law.”
81% support raising the minimum age to purchase assault weapons from 18 to 21.
65% support a ban on assault weapons.
64% support a limit to the number of rounds of ammunition a weapon can hold.
61% support a ban on high-capacity magazines.
The compromise Bipartisan Safer Communities Act passed by Congress did not fully address any of these causes of changes to our laws. Rather than focusing on the preponderance of guns in our country the legislation highlights mental health issues. It increases funding for community mental health clinics, encourages states to implement red flag laws, and closes the "boyfriend loop hole" which will prevent any person who is convicted of abuse of a domestic partner from having a gun for five years. This is important since 68% of gun violence — including mass shootings — begins as domestic violence. While the legislation enhances background checks for 18-21-year-olds, it does not include universal background checks, nor does it ban assault weapons or raise the age to purchase all weapons to 21. it is however the first gun safety legislation passed in 30 years and a good first step.
What stands in the way of North Carolina enacting common sense solutions that North Carolina residents support? The Republicans in our State Legislature. Democratic Representatives have repeatedly introduced bills that would protect the citizens of our state from gun violence:
HB 454 would have created an Extreme Risk Protection Order (Red Flag) Bill back in 2019.
HB 86 would have placed restrictions on bump stocks and the size of magazines (also introduced in March 2019)
HB 427 would have established a Firearm Safe Storage Awareness Initiative (introduced in May 2021)
HB 525 reintroduced the Extreme Risk Protection Order bill (Red Flag)in 2021 and
HB 623 would have extended the permit requirement from handguns to shotguns and rifles.
All have died in Committee — thanks to objections from the Republican leadership which has locked them in the Rules Committee, not even permitting debate.
Legislation proposed and supported by Republicans would have done just the opposite:
HB 398 would have repealed the requirement to request permits for pistols.
HB 48 would have allowed paramedics to carry concealed handguns.
SB 43 would have repealed the law against carrying guns into schools and religious organizations in the name of "security and protection."
HB 49 would have created a grace period of up to 180 days after a person's concealed carry permit expired to renew the permit with either no retraining or a reduced retraining requirement, and
HB 134 would have combined the provisions of SB 43, HB 48, and HB 49 in a single bill.
Governor Cooper vetoed both HB 398 and SB 43 in strong language:
"At a time of rising gun violence, we cannot afford to repeal a system that works to save lives. The legislature should focus on combating gun violence instead of making it easier for guns to end up in the wrong hands."
Unfortunately, House Speaker Moore rejects these efforts out of hand, turning the issue into a partisan debate about taking guns from law-abiding civilians: "If it's about gun control that the left always wants to talk about, I think disarming law-abiding citizens is not the way to make people safer." No surprise, here, since he and Senate Leader Berger both received the maximum donation allowed by law from the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund in 2020. Since 2016, they each have received $8,000 to keep guns in the hands of North Carolinians, law-abiding or not!
To justify his position, House Speaker Moore returns to the trope that a "good guy that has a weapon ...can stop the bad guy with one." We saw that didn't work in Uvalde. And neither do all the other efforts to harden schools, including those in the new Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
Lois Beckett, a reporter for the Guardian points out the fallacy that turning “schools into bunkers” will ensure safer schools. In fact, she argues, this has “led to more violence,” making schools less safe.
In an On the Media segment, Beckett argues that we can’t solve the problem of gun violence until we adequately understand it. “Less than 2% of school age children who die from gunshot wounds die in attacks on school property. Of the 1300 American school age kids who die every year from gunshot wounds, 700 are victims of gun homicides, 500 are gun suicides, about 90 from gun accidents."
Without a conversation that addresses the gun violence that takes the vast majority of lives, not just the most sensational violence, we will be stuck “trying to prevent 1% of people from dying and not caring about the other 99%."
Jeffrey Swanson, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke, concurs: "If we would have stopped every single mass shooting since 2000, we could have saved 500 lives. If we could have stopped all the gun suicides, we would have saved 300,000 lives."
The evidence we have about what works in reducing both mass shootings and suicides, are laws that keep guns out of the hands of those who are dangerous to themselves or others — laws calling for comprehensive background checks, laws that keep guns out of the hands of those convicted of domestic violence, and laws that enable extreme risk prevention orders — red flag laws which apply to those who are at risk of committing suicide as well as carrying out mass shootings.
There is no question we would have less gun violence if there were fewer guns in America, fewer handguns, as well as fewer assault weapons, since 74.4% of deaths by firearms in NC were caused by handguns.
We know what works. So let's follow Governor Cooper's advice and do everything we can to elect representatives who will enact laws that prevent gun violence. Let's elect Democrats for a safer North Carolina.