North Raleigh Today

Wake County Sheriff Gerald Baker issuing a moratorium on handgun permits until further notice, but that determination is facing opposition from an organization that bills itself as protecting freedoms.

Sheriff Gerald Baker's declaration comes in response to the spread of COVID-19, as efforts to mitigate the highly-contagious virus have impacted almost all aspects of daily life.

"With the COVID-19 virus, this thing changes constantly," Baker said, according to a transcript from WRAL.com on March 24. "We're constantly monitoring it reviewing procedures that we have in place from inception to make sure we've got all our basis covered the best as possible."

According to CNN's live cases tracker, North Carolina has the 19th most COVID-19 cases as of 10 a.m. on April 6. The state has nearly 2,700 positive cases and 41 deaths, according to CNN. The media outlet's figures are not far off from the April 5 figures available on the state's Health and Human Services website. The April 6 update is posted later today. 

Civitas Institute President Donald Bryson said, in a news release on March 24, that North Carolina state law doesn't allow sheriffs to stop issuing handgun permits.

“Unfortunately, it appears that Sheriff Baker is creating power to stop many firearm sales in Wake County. Nothing in state law provides a county sheriff to halt the legal purchase of firearms or issue pistol permits, wholesale," Bryson said in the news release. "All he has done with this arbitrary order is to prevent law-abiding citizens from exercising a right explicitly laid out in the state and federal constitutions. Sheriff Baker is pandering to a political base, and nothing in his order does anything to prevent unlawful use or ownership of firearms."

Baker decided to suspend applications for new handgun permits until April 30 because permit demand increased with the COVID-19 pandemic, the News & Observer reported.

“This decision does not limit anyone’s right to purchase a handgun,” Baker said in a news release. He also said he had to think of the health and safety of his department. “We have to limit folks coming in contact with each other. It was also a health concern for our staff.”

But Bryson said the sheriff is using the pandemic as an excuse to ban gun sales.

"... Sheriff Baker is using the permitting process in state law, which says a ‘sheriff shall issue’ the permit, to impose a de facto ban on gun sales," Bryson said in the news release. "A public health crisis is not the time to make up excuses to exceed the limits of governmental power.”