Legal actions in both North Carolina and California moved American liberties in the right direction against a wave of opposition from the federal government and mainstream media.
On the east coast, North Carolina burdened pistol purchasers with an additional layer of bureaucracy despite already having to undergo an FBI background check for retail transactions.
The Tar Heel State buried for good its 104-year-old restriction demanding that handgun purchasers first obtain a permit. Both legislative bodies previously approved canceling the archaic measure requiring law-abiding citizens to receive permission from the local sheriff to buy a pistol.
That ran into trouble, however, when North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the measure on what he termed as safety grounds. That veto, however, did not stand.
The North Carolina House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 71-46 to override Cooper’s rejection. This came just after the State Senate on Tuesday voted 30-19 to continue the repeal of the handgun law over Cooper’s resistance.
The governor successfully blocked the repeal in 2021, but gun rights supporters were able to shore up their numbers in both legislative bodies in recent elections.
Gun Owners of America’s (GOA) Southeast Region Director, Jordan Stein, celebrated the victory for the Second Amendment. “We are so proud to have played a part in this tremendous victory,” he said. “With this repeal, citizens of our state will no longer have to seek permission from local law enforcement in advance of purchasing a handgun to exercise their Second Amendment rights.”
On the west coast, California appealed a federal judge’s rejection of its onerous pistol restrictions. The Golden State, however, backed away from one key aspect of the overall law it wants to remain in force.
The state has a three-pronged requirement package built into its so-called Unsafe Handgun Act. Two of the provisions mandate a loaded chamber indicator and magazine disconnect safety.
On Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta requested the Ninth Circuit to review the lower court’s rejection of the law. But that action did not ask the appeals court to reinstate the third provision of the act.
Since 2013, California required a feature on handguns that is well-known to be impossible to mass produce with current technology. This microstamping would imprint a traceable serial number on the casing of every round fired. This theoretically would assist law enforcement in tracking down the gun that fired the shot — and thus the shooter.
The issue is this feature is currently science fiction. Not one single gun manufacturer around the globe has ever successfully produced a handgun with microstamping capabilities. Further, the gun industry asserts that with present technology that feat is impossible.
In other words, California inserted a provision into its gun laws that meant that no available handgun would pass muster and be approved for sale within the state.
The dropping of the microstamping provision followed the key ruling in Boland v. Bonta by Federal District Judge Cormac J. Carney. He noted the required feature is “simply not commercially available or even feasible to implement on a mass scale.”
By including this mandate, the state effectively for a decade prevented any new pistols from being added to its approved handgun list.
It is a great sign that a state that opposes gun rights to the extent of California backed off one of its more draconian measures. Microstamping hardly fits into the Supreme Court’s parameters for legally restricting firearms, and the state government finally recognized that it was holding on to a losing hand.
