By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
North Carolina gun rights advocates are cheering after majority Republicans in both the state House and Senate voted to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a bill that repealed a decades-old requirement that handgun buyers first get a permit from their local sheriff to complete the transaction.
Senate Bill 41 was vetoed by Democrat Cooper almost immediately after it passed both the Senate and House earlier this month. But thanks to last November’s election outcome, Republicans had a virtually veto-proof majority in both chambers. The Senate voted Tuesday 30-19 to override and the House followed up Wednesday with a 71-46 party line vote in which a couple of Democrats did not vote.
Paul Valone, president of Grass Roots North Carolina, which championed the legislation, was exuberant.
“Second Amendment supporters made history today,” he said Wednesday in a statement to the press. “In passing Senate Bill 41, we achieved the first override of anti-freedom Governor Roy Cooper’s many vetoes since 2018, and the first-ever override for a gun bill in North Carolina. Grass Roots North Carolina promised to deliver defeat to Cooper’s door, and we delivered on that promise.
“Second Amendment advocates owe thanks to Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, Speaker Tim Moore, Rules Chair Destin Hall; sponsors Sens. Danny Britt, Warren Daniel, Jim Perry; and all of the Republican legislators who voted for and supported SB 41 and similar bills,” Valone continued. “I encourage leadership to leverage this success by joining twenty-five other states in passing constitutional carry.
“I also thank the many volunteers and supporters Grass Roots North Carolina who made this victory possible by contacting legislators and walking the halls of the legislature,” he said.
Valone described the now-defunct permit requirement as a “Jim Crow-era” law that needed to go. In addition, SB41 now makes it possible for legally-permitted armed citizens to carry firearms in schools that double as places of worship, according to The Pulse.
Predictably, the gun prohibition lobby was reportedly furious.
“As America reels from the horrific school shooting in Nashville, gun lobby legislators in North Carolina are doubling down on a law that will make it even easier for people with dangerous histories to buy guns,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement quoted by The Pulse. “The evidence is clear — weak gun laws equals more death, a fact North Carolina lawmakers are willfully disregarding to curry favor from gun extremists.”
ABC News is reporting the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association is supporting the repeal, although its president opposed SB41.
The network also noted that three Democrats, identified as Reps. Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg County, Cecil Brockman of Guilford County and Michael Wray of Northampton County, did not vote in the override process “creating enough of a margin to meet the constitutional requirement.”
