Sadly, this week’s news was dominated by yet another mass school shooting. Three nine-year-old students and three staff members at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, were killed Monday morning by a lone shooter, who entered the school armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun. Police shot and killed the suspect, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, a former student at the school. The Associated Press reports that before Monday, there had been seven mass killings at K-12 schools since 2006. In each of those, the shooter was male. Hale, who was assigned female gender at birth, reportedly used he/him pronouns on social media. Police say that Hale planned the massacre, drawing out a detailed map and surveilling the building. Hale, who was under a doctor's care for an emotional disorder, bought seven firearms from five local gun stores between October 2020 and June 2022. Hale used three of them in Monday’s shooting. Repeal of Pistol Purchase Permits. Guns and their provenance were a leading local news story this week as the General Assembly repealed the State’s pistol permit law, formerly codified in G.S. 14-402 through 14-405 and 14-407.1. See S.L. 2023-8 (S 41). Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the legislation, which was supported by the NC Sheriff’s Association, on the basis that its elimination of background checks as a precondition of sale “will allow more domestic abusers and other dangerous people to own handguns and reduces law enforcement’s ability to stop them from committing crimes.” The repeal does not alter the requirement that licensed [...]
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