Open Letter to Speaker Tim Moore

Dear Speaker Moore:

To quote a song by the Grateful Dead, “what a long, strange trip it’s been.” Has it really been fifteen years since you first returned GRNC’s candidate survey with a near-perfect score of 99%, earning our highest four-star evaluation? I thank you for your help and support over those years, especially when, as Rules Chair, you successfully moved to table twelve anti-gun amendments to House Bill 937.
 
And over those years (indeed, since 1994), I recall how GRNC and its political action committee, GRNC-PVF, have done their part by supporting hundreds of pro-gun conservatives with rallies, voter guides, election alert mailings, automated telephone calls and radio advertising, even quite literally sending millions of email alerts to gun-owning voters.

So I have to admit that this year, I am perplexed. As Republican-controlled legislatures around the country continue to progressively roll back decades of creeping restrictions on our Second Amendment rights, North Carolina seems to be at a stalemate.

I had hoped that North Carolina would be at least the thirteenth state to enact permit-less concealed carry (a/k/a/ “constitutional carry”). But alas, while our bills languished in committee, New Hampshire eclipsed us for that honor.

I had hoped we would enact true campus carry in order to deter violent sociopaths from our educational institutions. But just days ago, Georgia bypassed us on that as well, as Governor Nathan Deal signed campus carry legislation into law.

Why are we stalled this year as other Republican majorities continue to codify gun rights? It isn’t as though any of the previous laws GRNC advocated have backfired. Far from it, each law passed, whether Castle Doctrine, parks carry, restaurant carry or other measures, has performed exactly as intended, saving scores of lives with few or no negative ramifications. Indeed, naysayers’ dire predictions have invariably proven wrong.

And it isn’t as though we are asking for anything which hasn’t been successfully tested and implemented elsewhere. For example, I have yet to see any reports of problems in any of the fourteen states which already have constitutional carry.

So please tell me, Mr. Speaker, why promises made to gun voters to move the legislation (which they so desperately need) remain unfulfilled. Ugly rumors conjecture that North Carolina Republicans, secure in their super-majorities after redistricting and interested in sitting back to enjoy the spoils of power, now feel they are no longer responsible to the voters who sent them to Raleigh to defend our rights. I pray those rumors are wrong.

Please help me dispel those ugly rumors, Mr. Speaker. Please engineer passage of the contents of House Bills 438, 588 and 746 promptly and send them to the Senate in time that they may be passed this year, thereby giving us time to over-ride a potential gubernatorial veto prior to the upcoming election year.

I look forward to telling others of your continued support for gun rights, and stand ready to assist you in any way possible.

Respectfully yours,

Paul Valone

President, Grass Roots North Carolina