Roy Cooper’s rise from North Carolina attorney general to the governor’s mansion was greased by the very healthcare interests he now claims to regulate, and the numbers tell the story. While Cooper’s campaign filings show modest personal wealth, his wife’s lobbying firm raked in millions from hospital systems and insurance giants that stood to benefit from the state’s Medicaid expansion and certificate-of-need laws—rules Cooper’s office helped shape. The result is a textbook case of regulatory capture: the same administration that tightens the spigot on new medical facilities also protects the market share of existing players, driving up costs for everyone else, including the law-abiding gun owners who pay those inflated premiums.

For the 2A community, the lesson is straightforward. When politicians monetize healthcare policy, they rarely stop at hospitals; they eventually turn their sights on firearm-related costs—trauma surcharges, mental-health red-flag reporting, and insurance riders that punish lawful carry. Cooper’s pay-to-play machine shows how quickly “public health” rhetoric becomes a revenue stream, and how little daylight exists between the donor class and the officials writing the rules. If North Carolina gun owners want to keep medical privacy and due process intact, they’ll need to treat healthcare lobbying as a Second Amendment issue, not a niche concern for policy wonks.