If NC Republicans really want to protect life and children, maybe they could start with guns

Republican U.S. senators have undermined the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court in their relentless and now successful effort to seat justices who will protect the “sanctity of life” by severely restricting access to abortion.

In Raleigh, Republicans who control the state legislature want to bar teachers from discussing gender and sexual orientation issues or aspects of the nation’s racial history that might make children uncomfortable.

But when it comes to keeping mentally disturbed teenagers from buying assault-style rifles that they use to slaughter schoolchildren, the Republicans suspend their eagerness to protect in order to receive bountiful donations from the National Rifle Association (NRA). Protecting children – and supermarket shoppers and nightclub guests, and churchgoers and people at concerts and movies – matters to them, of course, but protecting their reelection matters more.

We understand. We’ve understood since the 2012 slaughter of 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. We understand that nothing will break the Republican Party’s iron embrace not really of gun owners, but rather gun manufacturers. And we still understand it now after the mass murder Tuesday of at least 19 elementary school children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Before the Texas victims are buried, the enablers of the nation’s gun carnage will gather in Houston on Friday for the NRA’s Annual Leadership Forum. Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak to the organization that helped him win the White House in return for his opposition to limits on guns.

The NRA, undaunted by the exposure of corruption in its leadership ranks and the deaths caused by its success in blocking restrictions on guns, will celebrate the freedom of teenagers to buy assault-style rifles and high-volume ammunition magazines that need to be available … for what? Target shooting?

That unbreakable bond between Republicans and the gun lobby has been especially strong in North Carolina where the Republican-led legislature has eased gun restrictions. Most recently, it voted to eliminate the need to obtain a permit from the local sheriff before buying a handgun. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the bill, saying, “The legislature should focus on combating gun violence instead of making it easier for guns to end up in the wrong hands.”

North Carolina’s U.S. Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis are among the top beneficiaries from NRA campaign spending. The Republican Party’s nominee to replace the retiring Burr is Rep. Ted Budd, a gun store owner who wears a handgun in a campaign ad. He would be a fervent opponent of gun restrictions in almost any form.

When President Joe Biden issued an executive order in April 2021 calling for better record keeping by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on gun purchases and gun parts, Budd wrote to Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein urging them to disobey “President Biden’s dictatorial actions.” Also signing the letter were North Carolina Reps. Dan Bishop, Richard Hudson, David Rouzer, and Greg Murphy.

This is a measure of the irrationality of the Republicans’ objection to even modest and sensible limits on guns: You uphold the Constitution by disobeying the law. That the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms also includes the words “well regulated” doesn’t matter to these zealots.

A 2021 Pew Research Center poll showed Democrats and Republicans divided over whether gun laws should be tightened, though a small majority overall favored more restrictions. Given that split and the reality of the U.S. Senate, it’s unlikely that the disgraceful inaction in response to mass shootings will end after the carnage in Uvalde.

But if Republicans in Congress and in the General Assembly will not do a thing to restrict access to guns, let them at least stop claiming that they are the protectors of schoolchildren and devoted, above all else, to the sanctity of life.

This story was originally published May 25, 2022 at 1:59 PM.