One makes firearms. Both are veterans. How would candidates in NC race address gun violence?

Two military veterans vying to represent about 745,000 Charlotte-area residents in Congress have taken different approaches to gun control — one outspoken and one with views that are less clear.

The Democrat, state Sen. Jeff Jackson, has made reducing gun violence a significant part of his campaign. He vocally supported a federal, bipartisan gun control bill signed into law last month and has proposed other ideas for curbing gun violence, including universal background checks and banning the sale of high-capacity magazines.

Republican Pat Harrigan, who owns a gun manufacturing company, has remained mostly quiet on the issue. In a statement to The Charlotte Observer, Harrigan said he supports “better coordination between mental health systems and law enforcement, more access to juvenile behavioral histories, and other reasonable safeguards that will help prevent these tragedies in the future.”

“And I’m absolutely committed to being part of those discussions as member of Congress,” Harrigan said.

Harrigan, a first-time candidate, and Jackson are running to represent North Carolina’s newly created U.S. House District 14, which includes southern Mecklenburg and most of Gaston County. Previous election results show the district leans Democratic.

The candidates — Harrigan, a former detachment commander in the Green Berets who served in Afghanistan, and Jackson, a major in the Army National Guard who also served in Afghanistan — have both signaled willingness to reach across the aisle on the issue of gun violence.

Harrigan did not make himself available for an interview for this story. While Jackson has proposed more restrictive gun control measures than Harrigan — banning bump stocks and high-capacity magazines, for example — he has not publicly supported the ban of assault rifles or handguns.

What does the public think about gun control?

Recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas; and on Independence Day in Highland Park, Illinois, have kept talk of gun control front-and-center in American politics. The bipartisan bill signed by President Joe Biden last month was considered the most significant gun control action completed by the federal government in decades.

The bill expands background checks for people under the age of 21 and sets aside millions of dollars for state-led “intervention programs,” including mental health programs, drug courts and red-flag laws.

Leading up to the bill’s passage, support for stricter gun laws reached an all-time high, according to polling from Morning Consult and Politico. Polling conducted from June 10-12 found 68% of voters supported stricter gun laws, up from a previous high in 2019 of 66%.

Some level of gun control is popular in North Carolina as well, according to a poll from Third Way, a left-leaning think tank, and Republican polling firm GS Strategy Group. That poll, released in June, found 73% of North Carolina voters said it was too easy to buy a gun. Republicans, self-described conservatives and gun owners agreed — 54%, 52%, and 65% respectively.

There were more deaths from gun violence in 2020 than any year on record. The vast majority, more than 97%, were suicides or murders, while the remainder were unintentional, involved law enforcement or had other undetermined circumstances, according to Pew Research.

Nearly 80% of murders in 2020 involved a firearm.

Suicides accounted for 54% of gun deaths in 2020. On a per-capita basis, the rate of violent gun deaths in 2020 — 13.6 gun deaths per 100,000 — was the highest rate since the mid-1990s, but still “well below the peak of 16.3 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 1974.”

The number of deaths in mass shootings varies depending on which definition is used. The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as one where, excluding the shooter, four or more people are shot. Under that definition, the archive has documented 349 deaths in 2022.

What are Jeff Jackon’s and Pat Harrigan’s views on guns?

Jackson said in a Q&A with the Observer last year he supports universal background checks, red flag laws and banning bump stocks, which allow a person to shoot more rapidly with a long gun.

He also introduced the Safer Schools Healthier Kids Act in 2018. That bill included banning “the sale of assault weapons and long guns to minors in North Carolina, ban bump stocks and trigger cranks, and require licensing for gun sales to adults,” according to Giffords, a gun control advocacy group that has endorsed Jackson in his House bid.

While Harrigan has been less vocal, he said in a statement to the Observer he shares “the same fears that every other parent does in terms of keeping them safe at school” as a father of two girls.

“The American scourge of school shootings and mass shootings in other settings must stop, and I’m open to any productive dialogue on how to take steps to improve safety in this country,” he wrote.

Harrigan added that, as someone with “unique experience in how to responsibly use firearms,” he strongly believes in the rights given to Americans by the Second Amendment.

“As a nation, we have to identify how to ensure that firearms do not fall into the wrong hands without infringing on the rights of those who are acting responsibly,” he wrote.

Candidates spar over Harrigan’s gun sales

Jackson’s campaign also pointed the Observer to an interview Harrigan gave in 2018 to the AR-15 Podcast on the Firearms Radio Network. In the interview, Harrigan said his business benefited from the increase in gun sales following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.

“At that time, AR-15s were kind of in their heyday,” he said. “Sandy Hook had happened and there was a shortage (of AR-15s).”

In his statement to the Observer, Harrigan said it is “an unfortunate fact that after a firearms-related tragedy, gun sales go up due in large part to the reckless political dialogue that ensues shortly thereafter which makes law-abiding citizens concerned that their rights to own firearms will be threatened.”

“It’s my hope that reasonable political leaders, as I plan to be, will lower the temperature on that kind of dialogue and instead focus on solutions that will result in more lives saved and less political opportunism,” he continued. “Unfortunately, Jeff Jackson is too busy planting stories like this than defending his policies that are wrecking our economy and causing record inflation.”

Asked to respond, Jackson said Harrigan’s statement is “an admission ... that he saw and used the Sandy Hook massacre as a business opportunity to sell more assault weapons. Most Americans will find that obscene.”

The general election is Nov. 8. Other offices on the ballot include U.S. Senate and the North Carolina state legislature.

This story was originally published July 6, 2022 at 6:00 AM.

Will Wright

The Charlotte Observer

Will Wright covers politics in Charlotte and North Carolina. He previously covered eastern Kentucky for the Lexington Herald-Leader, and worked as a reporting fellow at The New York Times.