Doing the Right Thing

North Carolina State Senator Doug Berger, a Franklin County Democrat, has introduced a bill that would end the requirement for North Carolina sheriff's offices to conduct background checks and issue permits before citizens can buy a pistol or crossbow.

"There should be no infringement on a person's ability to purchase a gun," said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Doug Berger, D-Franklin County.

Gun control advocates were shocked when they learned of the bill.

"How can this be the response, that we want to to make it easier (to get guns)?" said Roxane Kolar, executive director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence.

Berger argued that leaving it up to local sheriffs to decide whether to issue a person a gun permit is too subjective.

"We need to begin to look at those laws that are on our books that were written at a time when people did not fully appreciate the Second Amendment," the senator said.

"Did not fully appreciate the Second Amendment," indeed.

The existing law, like so many throughout the country, are the ugly remnants of racist gun control that came down from this nation's founding and through our shared history.

It is particularly poignant that a North Carolina Democrat is the senator offering up such a bill, as it was the North Carolina Democratic Party that staged the only successful coup d'etat in American history, which was followed by the passage of Jim Crow laws that destroyed the rights of African Americans until the Civil Rights era. Among those laws inspired by the Jim Crow era was the process of county sheriffs awarding pistol permits to people of "good character," which was widely understood for many years to mean whites.

Not surprisingly, the bill is already encountering opposition from gun control advocates.

Racists.