The North Carolina Pistol Permit system is a hold-over "may issue" system from the old Jim Crow anti-black laws. It was used for decades to prohibit blacks from purchasing and possessing handguns in the state.
it's administered by our all powerful County Sheriffs (all 100 of them, in 100 different ways). Until we got H.562 passed this year, it was still a "may issue" system. Now it's finally "shall issue". We tried to get rid of the program altogether, but Bloomberg spent $350,000 on TV advertising and got an amendment passed to keep the system in place. He said we were trying to eliminate background checks... Lies...
In effect, the costly system (your $5 permit fee costs $75 to process times hundreds of thousands permits per year) puts a 5 year delay between passing a background check (which gets you a paper certificate for buying one handgun within 5 years) and actually acquiring the handgun (without a second background check required). This has allowed over 5,300 permits to remain in the hands of prohibited persons (according to a 2014 audit by the courts).
It also requires the seller to obtain the buyer's permit in a private transaction. It's unlikely that criminals transferring stolen guns, or straw purchasers bother to get their buyer's permit.
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There are multiple qualifiers for buying guns from the CMP.
One of them is that you be a member of a CMP affiliated club.
The rest are listed here:
https://thecmp.org/cmp_sales/rifle_s...-requirements/