The News & Observer | Roy Cooper headlines national conference, promising moderate solutions to gun debate
BY WILL DORAN, THE NEWS & OBSERVER
11/07/22 4:35 PM EDT
Just weeks after a mass shooter killed five people in North Carolina’s capital city, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper will take center stage at a conference for a new political group that aims at finding areas of bipartisan agreement on the national debate over guns and the Second Amendment.
The group is called 97Percent. It’s named after the finding, in a 2018 public opinion poll, that 97% of Americans support universal background checks on gun purchases. The name also nods to the fact that universal background checks have failed to pass into law despite that broad public support.
The group aims specifically to highlight moderate politicians and get more gun owners involved in conversations around gun control and gun safety.
“Reducing gun violence will take all of us coming together to find common ground to save lives,” Cooper said in a written statement. “I’m pleased with our efforts to strengthen background checks, mandate safety plans, and bring together leaders across schools and local law enforcement, but we know there is more work to do.” At the group’s Nov. 17 conference, which Cooper will headline as keynote speaker, the group’s leaders plan to release a specific set of policy proposals for government officials to consider. The conference will stream online; people interested in watching can sign up at www.97percent.us.
Those proposals will have backing from moderate gun owners, the group claims, as well as from academic research showing they’d significantly reduce the numbers of murders and suicides in America.
“97Percent is about bringing leaders from all sides of the gun safety movement together to find common ground to reduce gun violence,” the group’s executive director Mathew Littman wrote in a statement to The News & Observer. “We are excited to have Governor Cooper and a phenomenal lineup of speakers from across the political spectrum who are leading the charge on gun safety.”
COOPER’S RECORD ON GUNS
In North Carolina, compared to many other states, the governor’s office is particularly weak. That, combined with the fact that the legislature has been under Republican control for the entirety of Cooper’s time as governor, has limited his ability to enact gun policies he favors.
Some of the gun policies Cooper has publicly backed include: A universal background check law, “red flag” laws, increased funding for mental health care, and a ban on assault weapons.
GOP leaders in North Carolina proudly tout their record of loosening the state’s gun laws since taking control of the legislature in 2011 — and their record of opposing new policies like red flag laws that would allow police to seize weapons from people deemed to be a threat to themselves or others. Congress passed incentives for states to create such laws in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, massacre. That drew bipartisan support in Congress, but not locally in the state legislature, where Republican leaders quickly dismissed the idea.
“The thing that you want to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good person with a gun,” N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters this summer, dismissing the possibility that North Carolina would adopt that red flag proposal.
Possibly the most powerful tool Cooper does have is his ability to veto bills and prevent them from becoming law. Since 2020 Cooper has successfully vetoed three gun bills that passed the Republican-led state legislature. However, it’s likely that some if not all of those will be proposed again if Republicans regain a veto-proof supermajority in Tuesday’s elections.
“The stakes of this year’s election are real, with children’s safety and the ability to prevent people who are known threats from accessing firearms on the line,” Cooper spokesman Ford Porter said.
One of the gun bills Cooper vetoed would have allowed people to bring guns onto school property if attending a religious service held at the school. Another would’ve gotten rid of a rule that, if someone’s concealed carry permit lapses, they have to retake the training course. The third would’ve let people buy pistols without first qualifying for a permit, which requires a background check into the person’s history of criminal activity, drug abuse or mental illness.
“At a time of rising gun violence, we cannot afford to repeal a system that works to save lives,” Cooper wrote when the vetoed the pistol permit bill last year. “The legislature should focus on combating gun violence instead of making it easier for guns to end up in the wrong hands.”
At the time the bill to get rid of pistol permits passed in 2021, some of the state lawmakers most vocal about it were people who are now running for Congress.
Cary Sen. Wiley Nickel, a Democrat now running for the state’s 13th district U.S. House seat, defended Cooper’s veto. Hendersonville Sen. Chuck Edwards, a Republican who’s now running for the 11th district U.S. House seat, criticized pistol permits as a racist relic from the past.
“Pistol purchase permits were created by Jim Crow Democrats to keep guns away from Black people, and data shows that Black applicants are still rejected at a higher rate than white applicants,” Edwards said at the time, The N&O reported.
Cooper has also used executive orders to enact some minor gun policies. None have focused on gun control specifically, but instead have targeted issues like safe storage and background checks.
In 2018, he ordered the State Bureau of Investigation to look at what data North Carolina had previously reported to the FBI, which operates the federal background check system. The SBI discovered that North Carolina had failed to report nearly 300,000 criminal convictions — possibly allowing people to slip through the cracks and buy a gun despite their criminal record.
The following year, in 2019, the state finished adding that data into the system. That same year Cooper signed an executive order that the SBI help train local cops on identifying threats, and that the Department of Health and Human Services start a statewide campaign focused on promoting safe storage of firearms in the home.
Last year a bipartisan bill proposed spending $155,000 to promote that safety campaign and help gun owners buy locks for their firearms. It passed the N.C. House in a 116-1 vote, The N&O reported, but leadership in the N.C. Senate never allowed it to come up for a vote.
COOPER RAISING HIS NATIONAL PROFILE
Cooper, a centrist Democrat who has been able to win statewide in North Carolina in two elections when Donald Trump also won the state, will be joined at the event by other political moderates like Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois.
The speech comes as Cooper — who is also currently the president of the national Democratic Governors Association — has been raising his national profile.
He is term-limited and can’t run for a third term as governor in 2024, and there has been speculation in Raleigh and Washington, that he may be a presidential contender if Democratic President Joe Biden chooses not to run again.
In a recent episode of his podcast that focused on North Carolina, David Plouffe, the former campaign manager for President Barack Obama, asked an N&O politics reporter about the possibility that Cooper might run in 2024.
“The parlor games in DC around the presidential race really never stop,” Plouffe said. “They’re intensifying even though we have the ‘22 election right in front of us. So, in scenarios where people say ‘Well, if Biden doesn’t run,’ then Gov. Roy Cooper would be seen as a potential candidate.”
Cooper evades the question whenever it comes up, tending to say he’s just focused on doing his job as governor and that it’s too early to talk about 2024.
“We’ll see at that point,” he told The N&O last month.