All decent people are sickened over the terrorist attack in Orlando last night. If this doesn’t demonstrate the need for American citizens to be armed, I don’t know what does. I don’t know for sure, but I assume the place where this happened was a “gun free zone,” where law-abiding people were not allowed to be armed. I’m sure it was against the law for the idiot who shot over a hundred people to have his guns in there, too. That law did not prevent him from doing it, and did not save one life.
That’s the point we need to get through the thick skulls of a lot of anti-gun activists. CRIMINALS AND TERRORISTS DO NOT OBEY GUN LAWS!!! THAT’S WHY OUR CITIZENS NEED TO BE ARMED!!! If just a few of the citizens in that place had been armed, they could have stopped this guy long before the police got there and before he killed or wounded over a hundred people.
There are a lot of anti-gun activists who just don’t get this. They don’t understand that a gun never commits a crime. It is the criminal or terrorist who does that, and honest citizens have the right to be armed in order to protect themselves and each other from the bad guys. The problem is that too many in our government want to stop us from being armed for self defense, not for the sake of safety (that would be an obvious contradiction) but because they know that an armed citizenry cannot be controlled by tyrants.
I saw where some misinformed persons raised the idea that my Gun Rights Amendment was put forward by Republicans in response to this incident or in response to the ruling against concealed carry by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. That shows a lack of knowledge of the facts. I have tried to run a Gun Rights Amendment every year since I got to Raleigh. So this is the fourth version of it. I filed the bill last Thursday. The terrorist attack in Orlando did not happen until Saturday night. I didn’t hear about the Ninth Circuit ruling until I was on my way home from Raleigh on Thursday afternoon. I had this bill in the works in Bill Drafting for several weeks before it was ready for filing. It takes too long to get a bill ready for introduction for me to have done this in response to either of these incidents, especially one that happened two days after I filed the bill.
The incident in Orlando does make the point of my proposed amendment to the NC Constitution very clearly. Especially in these times, our people need to be armed. Yes, we should all seek proper training and practice if we are going to be armed; but an armed citizenry is essential to freedom and would be a real deterrent to criminals and terrorists. Of course the Ninth Circuit ruling also highlights the urgency of the moment for standing up for our rights to keep and bear arms. A government that would disarm honest citizens is a government that cannot be trusted and should not be.
Requiring honest citizens to go through the process and expense of getting a concealed carry permit is an infringement on our rights. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which, I would remind everyone, was put there at the insistence of the State of North Carolina, along with the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights before we would ratify that Constitution, plainly says that our right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.” It says nothing about special circumstance under which it may be infringed or making the exercise of that right subject to government approval.
If a person intends to use a gun in committing a crime, that person is not going to worry about having a concealed carry permit. So that infringement should not be placed on the rights of the honest citizen who may need to act to defend self or others. North Carolina is an open carry State. It makes no sense to restrict concealed carry. After all, once a person draws the gun out of concealment, it is no longer concealed, and one can commit an act of violence with a gun that is carried openly just as easily as with one that is concealed. It is not whether the gun is carried openly or concealed that makes the difference; but the intention of the person carrying it either way. A person who is not going to use a gun to commit a crime is not going to do it regardless of whether he/she carries it openly or concealed.
Some want to criticize my bill because it leaves certain restricted areas in place where guns cannot be carried concealed, such as the Governor’s Mansion or the State Capitol Building or the Legislative Building. The law currently does not allow us to carry guns in those places openly or concealed; so that makes no difference. Besides, there will be enough resistance to my proposed amendment without making those changes. It would have no chance at all with them.
The reason the sentence I am trying to remove was added to our Constitution in the first place was to try to prevent former slaves from carrying concealed weapons to assassinate their former owners. It is a Jim Crow law, and we need to be rid of it. Criminals and terrorists will carry concealed weapons no matter what the law says. Honest citizens should not be hindered in carrying weapons openly or concealed in order to stop criminals and terrorists from carrying out their attacks, especially since the manner of carry makes no difference to the intent of the one who carries.
My bill proposes a constitutional amendment. That means it asks for the people to have a chance to decide. Those who govern should have no problem with allowing the people to make that decision unless they have untrustworthy motives.
Rep. Pittman’s bill establishes permitless carry, then undermines it by restricting the practice in certain areas to a few government workers. If he is serious about citizens exercising their God-given, absolute right to self defense everywhere they go, he’ll drop the list of the privileged and remove the force of law from gun-free zones.
The NCSA will never allow this to go through, since, if they won’t give up a $5.00 pistol permit, they certainly won’t surrender an $80 CHP.