NC House votes to repeal concealed carry rules, despite GOP holdouts

North Carolina Republicans' effort to get rid of the state's concealed carry laws ran into some bipartisan opposition Wednesday when it passed the state House of Representatives, but with GOP defections.

The concealed carry repeal, Senate Bill 50, passed the state Senate in a party-line vote in March. But it was held up in the House of Representatives for the last several months.

During Wednesday's debate Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, dismissed concealed carry permits as an unconstitutional infringement on people's rights. Rep. Phil Rubin, D-Wake, said the permits require people to pass training and a background check, and help improve public safety. Other states have already gotten rid of their concealed carry rules, Rubin said, and gun violence has since risen in all of those states. Kidwell retorted that many of those states still have lower murder rates than states with strict gun control rules.

The bill passed 59-48 in Wednesday's vote. That could spell trouble for the bill's chances of becoming law, since defeating a likely veto by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein would require not only unanimous GOP support in the House but also at least one Democratic supporter. No Democrats voted for the bill. Several Republicans voted against it or skipped the vote.

Supporters knew that result was likely coming: In the bill's final House committee hearing Tuesday, it was nearly blocked from being allowed up for a vote at all, due to bipartisan opposition.

"I do know of some opposition to it," bill sponsor Sen. Danny Britt, R-Robeson, told the House Rules committee Tuesday ahead of their vote. "Most of it unreasonable. Some of it — well, we all have our opinions."

Republicans have given themselves a strong majority on the House Rules committee roster, holding an 18-9 advantage over Democrats. Yet when the vote came on Tuesday, the concealed carry bill was nearly shot down.

Two Republicans sided with Democrats in opposing it — former federal prosecutor Ted Davis of Wilmington and Bladen County farmer Bill Brisson — and several other Republicans skipped the vote.

In the end it squeaked through by a count of 12-10.

Davis indicated that his constituents were concerned about the bill eliminating training requirements and lowering the age from 21 to 18 to carry a concealed handgun. He also referenced how the current permit system allows the state to proactively block people from carrying guns if they're domestic abusers or have other criminal or mental health issues — safeguards that would go away if Senate Bill 50 becomes law.

Britt told Davis the new rules would still make it a crime for people to carry a concealed gun in some of those circumstances, such as if they're a felon or have been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. But there would be no more process, like there currently is, for law enforcement to proactively tell those people they can't carry a concealed weapon. People would just have to read up on state law first to find out what the rules are.

Rep. Cynthia Ball, D-Wake, said that's a key concern for her. Having law enforcement tell certain people they can't carry guns is a good public safety feature under the current law, she said.

"The guardrails we have, we hope are somewhat helpful," she said. "But having none is a problem."

Britt, who works as a criminal defense attorney in Lumberton, dismissed such concerns. He said plenty of people already violate the state's gun laws, so he wants to pass this bill to let law-abiding people have easier access to guns themselves, to potentially ward off criminals.

"I represented five clients with [charges of] possession of firearm by a felon last week," Britt said. "It's conceivable those people went out and got guns, even though we have a law that says they can't have them. Because they did."

Nearly all other Republican-led states in the U.S. have already repealed their concealed carry laws, part of an effort by Second Amendment advocates to broaden people's gun rights. That has led many national activists to turn their attention to North Carolina, putting pressure on GOP state lawmakers to follow suit.

""Right now we have 29 states in the United States that's already passed similar legislation with permitless carry," Ken Stallings of the pro-gun group Grassroots NC told a different House committee earlier this month. "We look forward to making North Carolina 30."

Senate leader Phil Berger effectively killed the bill in 2023 by signaling his opposition. But Berger now faces a 2026 primary challenge backed by opponents who say he's insufficiently conservative, and this year he's a co-sponsor of the bill.

One part of the bill's struggles in 2023 was the formal opposition against it by law enforcement associations. This year, individual sheriffs and police officers have continued voicing their opposition to the bill at the state legislature. But the official groups that lobby for them have stayed silent, taking no formal stance either for or against the new version of the bill. It contains some pro-police measures including larger death benefits for families of officers killed in the line of duty.

In April, a Meredith College poll found that public opinion was about evenly split on the broad question of whether to jettison the state's concealed carry rules — but there was strong opposition to the part of the bill allowing people as young as 18 to carry concealed weapons, with 71% opposing that idea.

Rep. Renee Price, D-Orange, said she recognizes that plenty of people teach their kids to use guns. Her own mother learned how to shoot as a young child, she said. But knowing how to accurately shoot a gun is a very different skill from knowing when to pull out a gun or to back down from an altercation, she said — something that teenagers might struggle with.