Opinion: We need to elect politicians who will focus on gun safety legislation
There are so many sad gun violence anniversaries in the United States. Oct. 1 is the sixth anniversary of the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival mass shooting, which occurred on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada.
During this event, more than 1,000 bullets were fired by one shooter from a 32nd floor hotel room, killing 60 people and injuring at least 413. To quote a sixth-grader from the Chapel Hill Carrboro school district, who recently experienced a school lockdown, “Why does this keep happening?”
I think the answer is in who we elect and trust to push through gun safety legislation.
I have a wish list for what I want in our state’s next chief executive and commander-in-chief in the upcoming 2024 gubernatorial election. At the top of it is the freedom to worship, attend school, go to festivals and concerts, work, and shop at the grocery store or Walmart, all without concern for gun violence. These freedoms are much more important to me than the unfettered right to bear arms and I know that I am not alone.
Nearly 89% of North Carolina voters support universal background checks, which would require the majority of firearms sales in the U.S. to be recorded or go through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. At least 21 states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington State,) and the District of Columbia currently require background checks for at least some firearms sales.
Sadly, North Carolina is not among these. In fact, in March 2023, our state lawmakers relaxed the state’s existing gun legislation by repealing the Pistol Purchase Permitting (PPP) system, allowing many people who had undergone background checks prior to the repeal of the PPP system to purchase handguns at gun shows or online, without any questioning.
Did you know that 2021 was the most violent year of the 21st century in North Carolina with 1,839 firearm deaths? Provisional 2022 CDC data suggests that levels of violence remain near all-time highs. In Buncombe County alone there were 43 gun related deaths in 2022. Particularly concerning, the leading cause of injury-related deaths for children and youth in North Carolina is, you guessed it, guns.
As a retired nurse practitioner I’ve certainly seen the results of gun violence first hand. I’ve cared for a young woman at the end-of-life because of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. I’ve stayed locked in my office at the hospital during an active shooter alert. I’ve told a colleague how sorry I was when his son was killed by a shooter when he was attending a college class at UNC-G and written a sympathy card to the family of a local nephrologist who was shot and killed by the father of one of his patients.
Personally, I have reached out to a college roommate whose father was shot and killed while attending a potluck event at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. Lastly I have cried while watching news coverage of fatal shootings at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina; the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida; Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas; the Buffalo, New York, supermarket shootings; the Tree of Life Synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and the UNC Chapel Hill shooting of Associate Professor Zijie Yan. I wish I could say that the above is a comprehensive list, but sadly it is not. I can say that without question, this is too much and too sad.
As the Republican gubernatorial primary approaches (March 5, 2024) and the North Carolina general election (Nov. 5, 2024), I urge you to vote with your heart. What is most important to you and your friends and families? What steps do you think are important to achieve these goals? Is it the agenda of North Carolina’s current Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a proud owner of AR-15s (used in at least 10 of the 17 deadliest mass shootings in America, according to the Washington Post,) a man who is on the board of the NRA and received $82,000 from the NRA Political Victory Fund in 2020? This candidate does not match up with my wish list for the future. Does he with yours?
Margaret Perkins is a retired nurse practitioner who has seen the results of gun violence first hand.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: Gun violence can be stopped through elections
