North Carolina has 77 pages of gun laws on its books. But can they be enforced?
A panel of 16 high school and college students discussed gun violence at a reverse town hall organized by the UNC Institute for Politics. The IOP invited four legislators from the N.C. General Assembly to pose questions to the panel of politically active young people from around the state.
Rep. John Torbett, a Republican from N.C. District 108; Rep. John Faircloth, a Republican from N.C. District 61; Rep. Cynthia Ball, a Democrat from N.C. District 49; and Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, a Democrat from N.C. District 16, asked questions and listened without rebuttal to the insights and experiences of the student leaders, who have never known a time when school massacres didn’t happen. Columbine happened 19 years ago.
The students came from urban and rural areas. They differed in gender, race and party affiliation. And they knew their stuff. When asked about specific steps the legislators could take to make schools safer, one student asked for their support in repealing the Dickey Amendment, a rider added to a federal bill in 1996 that prevents funds appropriated to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for injury prevention to be used to promote gun control.
Another student suggested opening the NCIS (National Criminal Intelligence Service) system to private individuals to do criminal background checks of a buyer in a private sale. (At present, the seller must voluntarily go to the police station and have police run it.)
Still another student explained that in North Carolina, gun permits were introduced to prevent African-Americans from owning firearms.
Consider simplifying the laws and removing the discrepancies between state and county laws, some students suggested.
“Fix gerrymandering” received hearty applause from the audience.
The students weighed in on finding a balance between being safe and being over-policed, and the impact on their learning environment. All students knew the lingo of “campus carry” — bringing a gun onto school grounds — but only two of the 16 supported it. One defended it for elementary schools, citing the inconvenience to parents who would have to go home and lock up their guns before coming to school to pick up their children.
The urban/rural divide played into the conversation. Rural counties are more violent than urban ones and often get left behind by state legislators. Schools in areas with a high percentage of minority residents tend to spend more on policing than on educating students.
Students were not of one mind on the impact of the school walkouts. One student thought it made young people more politically engaged; another countered that too many students treated it as a joke. “You shouldn’t be happy-go-lucky [during a walkout],” she said. “You should be uncomfortable.”
When one questioner pointed out that people who carry guns are four times more likely to be killed by a gun, one student flipped the construct: “People more likely to get shot want to bring a gun to a gunfight.”
“Why don’t you trust people who carry guns?” another asked.
Students and legislators agreed that the conversation had been helpful. The moderator wrapped up by reminding us: “It’s our responsibility as human beings to listen to one another.”
— Nancy Oates
