In the COVID-19 pandemic, what would you consider to be an essential need? Food would be somewhere on that list, access to the Internet and water. One of the items you would be missing on that list according to Grass Roots North Carolina (GRNC) and Gun Owners of America would be your right to bear arms. Specifically, your right to go get a permit to buy a gun. GRNC wrongly views pistol permits as essential during this time, when quite the opposite is true. Law and order is not breaking down, and no one needs to run out and get a gun like its apocalypse.
Wake County has seen a 250% increase in demand for pistol permits, or 290 new permit requests a day during the third week of March alone. This has resulted in a huge backlog of 755 permits to get through. Wake County Sheriff Gerald Baker wanted to shut down new permit requests in order to get through the backlog and suspended pistol purchase permits until April 30. North Carolina law mandates that a pistol permit has to be approved or denied within 14 days. That’s a huge backlog of people to get through, especially with the limited number of clerks that the sheriff’s office can use.
According to the GRNC, that isn’t a good enough reason. Their director of legal affairs, Edward Green, writes that a huge workload is not a valid reason to deny pistol permits. He argues that the suspension “Effectively bans residents of Wake County from engaging in conduct that is at the very core of the Second Amendment at a time when the need for self-defense may be at its very greatest.” Republican legislators also agree as state Sens. Warren Daniel and Danny Britt issued a joint statement demanding that pistol permits be allowed again as “People are already suspicious and on edge. It’s reckless to illegally suspend their Second Amendment rights just when they need assurance that they can trust the government.”
The suspension did end on March 31 under the order of Superior Court Judge A. Graham Shirley. The sheriff has to find a way to modify the application process to “minimize or alleviate the admission of applicants for said permits to the Public Safety Center,” during the term of the State of Emergency, and resume processing applications, in as timely a fashion as possible, under the current conditions. The sheriff was also being sued by Grass Roots North Carolina, the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition and one resident from Wake County.
Do we really need to be getting pistol purchasing permits in such a time like this? We are in a global pandemic, and yes that is a scary thing to be in as the number of people infected and deaths skyrockets around the world. Yet, it is not like the government just disappeared and there is no order. There are still laws to follow, and there are police officers to enforce those laws. So why would Edward Green say that currently “the need for self-defense is at its greatest”? No one is going around looting other people’s homes for food. We still live in a civilized society, so why in the world are we risking the lives of clerks to do the processing paperwork for pistol purchasing permits to be done in 14 days?
This entire endeavor seems to be a waste of resources that could have been used to be fighting other over reaches of power and violations of our amendments (Got any stock tips, Burr?) that are being covered up by the pandemic. Even looking beyond how easy it is to get a permit, why would anyone be against letting the clerks be able to do their work in a safe environment without needing to rush through an already lax amount of gun regulation? The overturning of the suspension of permit requests is a stupid thing to waste time on, espicially when we could be doing so much more to fight the COVID-19 curve.
