Former NC lawmaker says gun violence ‘breaks my heart.’ So he wrote a song. | Opinion
Charlie Albertson has always believed that a song is a good way to make a statement, and he’s spent much of his life living out that mantra.
Albertson, 91, isn’t just a musician who has toured internationally and played the Grand Ole Opry — he’s also a former state lawmaker frustrated with the inaction of his former colleagues on gun reform.
His newest song, titled “Change Our Ways,” is a folksy tune meant to take a stand against gun violence. In the hook, Albertson sings, “To make things better, we’re going to have to change our ways.” All proceeds from the song, which is available on iTunes, will go to gun violence prevention.
Like many Americans, Albertson worries about the mass shootings happening far too often across the country. He has grandchildren and great-grandchildren now, and he can’t help but think about what it must do to them, living in a world filled with so much fear and grief.
“I do wonder what kind of world we’re leaving them,” he told me. “It just breaks my heart knowing they’re going to school and wondering if someone will find a way to get in with an assault weapon and slaughter so many of them indiscriminately.”
But it doesn’t have to be that way, and that’s the message Albertson hopes to get across in his song. He is a gun owner himself, and he respects the Second Amendment — but he believes there’s common ground to be found on guns.
“I understand and believe in the right to bear arms,” said Albertson. “But I can’t imagine that our forefathers, when they wrote the amendments, could envision that time would come and we would have weapons of mass destruction.”
Albertson served 11 terms as a Democrat representing Duplin County in the state legislature before retiring in 2011. Nicknamed “The Singing Senator,” he performed songs at campaign rallies and recorded jingles for UNC-TV, the N.C. Department of Transportation and the N.C. Department of Agriculture. He was inducted into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, one of North Carolina’s top honors, by former Gov. Jim Hunt and a strip of Interstate 40 in Duplin County bears his name.
This isn’t the first time that Albertson has written something with political overtones. He’s written a spoken word piece about democracy and a protest song in defense of Willie Nelson. More recently, he’s been working on a song about the war in Ukraine.
Of course, music has long been used as a tool for political protest. Songs like Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” are often studied in history classrooms. Albertson doesn’t expect that he’ll ever write that kind of hit in his lifetime, but he hopes that “Change Our Ways” will at least mean something.
“I just think it’s so sad that we’re at this place in time and in this great country that we all love so much,” Albertson said. “And I just felt like I needed to try to say something good if I could.”
Albertson was dismayed when his former colleagues in the General Assembly repealed North Carolina’s pistol permit law in March, making it easier for people to purchase a handgun. In the song, Albertson expresses his belief that assault weapons should be banned and calls on lawmakers to act, asking them, “To calm our children’s fear and save a lot of lives, what are you willing to sacrifice?”
Right now, Albertson doesn’t think lawmakers are even having that conversation, because they have to be willing to stand up to the gun lobby first and foremost. He knows better than anyone that those lawmakers won’t be there forever, and someday they will look back and wonder what they could have done when they had the opportunity.
“I’ve learned it’s good to be good,” Albertson told me. “But sometimes just being good isn’t good enough. You have to do things sometimes that aren’t popular in order to make things better.”
