Roy Cooper’s 2020 executive order didn’t just create another blue-ribbon panel; it locked in a worldview that treats every arrest statistic as proof of systemic bias rather than evidence of behavior. By handing the gavel to Josh Stein and Anita Earls—both vocal critics of proactive policing—the task force was guaranteed to produce recommendations that treat enforcement itself as the problem. The predictable result was a menu of “reforms” that dialed back cash bail, expanded diversion programs, and pressured prosecutors to downgrade felonies, all under the banner of racial equity.

For North Carolina’s gun owners, the downstream effects are immediate and measurable. When career criminals cycle through the system on reduced charges, the same repeat offenders who once faced swift revocation of firearm rights now re-enter communities still armed and still dangerous. Meanwhile, law-abiding carriers who rely on constitutional carry or shall-issue permitting find themselves navigating an environment where police are slower to respond and district attorneys are quicker to drop cases. The 2A community has watched this script play out in cities that adopted similar equity frameworks: clearance rates drop, shootings rise, and the political class responds by blaming the gun rather than the revolving-door policies that put violent actors back on the street.

Cooper’s manifesto is therefore more than a campaign footnote; it is a preview of how a Cooper-Stein regime would treat the intersection of crime and self-defense. Expect renewed pushes for red-flag laws, expanded background-check databases, and “equity audits” of who gets charged with unlawful possession—all while the underlying crime wave that justifies armed self-defense is left unaddressed. North Carolina’s voters now have a clear choice: a candidate who sees armed citizens as part of the solution or one whose record shows he views them as obstacles to a softer, supposedly fairer system.