If you’ve been following the saga of North Carolina’s Senate Bill 50 — the “Freedom to Carry NC” Act — you know the drill by now. The bill passes the Senate. The bill passes the House. The Democratic governor vetoes it. The Senate overrides. And then the House does… nothing. For months. For nearly a year.
That may finally be changing.
According to comments made by Grass Roots North Carolina President Paul Valone to ABC11 on April 28, North Carolina House Speaker Destin Hall now sees “a path forward” for bringing SB50 to the House floor for an override vote. After more than a dozen instances of the bill being placed on the House calendar and quietly withdrawn since last summer, that’s the closest thing to actual movement the override fight has had since the Senate did its job back on July 29, 2025.
If — and at this point it’s still an “if” — the House finds the votes, North Carolina becomes the 30th state to recognize that exercising a constitutional right doesn’t require permission from the state.
The Quick Recap for Anyone Not Already Tired of This Story
SB50 was filed in February 2025. It would let any law-abiding North Carolinian who can legally own a firearm and is at least 18 years old carry concealed without first paying for a permit. It does not change who can legally possess a firearm. Felons, fugitives, prohibited persons, and anyone else barred under federal or state law remains barred. The existing concealed handgun permit system stays in place for anyone who wants one for reciprocity in other states or to streamline future firearm purchases.
The Senate passed it. The House passed it 59-48 on June 11, 2025. Governor Josh Stein vetoed it on June 20, trotting out the same tired script every Democratic governor uses for this kind of bill — “training requirements,” “lowered minimum age,” “endangering law enforcement” — none of which has any meaningful evidence behind it from the 29 states already operating under permitless carry. The Senate overrode the veto by a 30-19 vote on July 29.
And then the House sat on it.
Why It Has Lasted This Long
North Carolina requires a three-fifths majority of the chamber to override a gubernatorial veto. House Republicans have a comfortable majority on paper, but two Republicans — Rep. Ted Davis (New Hanover) and Rep. William Brisson (Bladen and Sampson Counties) — voted against SB50 on the original second reading. Ten others abstained.
To override, leadership needs every other Republican plus enough additional votes to clear three-fifths. Placing the bill on the calendar without locked-in commitments risks losing the override and killing the bill outright. Withdrawing it preserves the option. So leadership keeps shuffling it on and off the calendar while the whip count grinds forward — a process that’s now stretched across multiple delays since February and that has, understandably, frustrated North Carolina gun owners who were promised this bill would get across the line.
Speaker Hall’s “path forward” comment is the first time in a long time anyone in House leadership has signaled the votes might actually be there.
The Opposition Doesn’t Need a Path Forward — They Just Need One Republican
The usual suspects are organizing hard against the override. North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, Moms Demand Action, Students Demand Action, Giffords, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions held an event in Raleigh on April 28 specifically focused on running out the clock on the House override. Their case rests entirely on two arguments: SB50 eliminates the mandatory training requirement, and it lowers the carry age from 21 to 18.
Both arguments collapse under the slightest pressure.
On the training requirement: as Valone bluntly put it, “What other constitutionally guaranteed freedom are you required to seek mandatory training for?” You don’t need a state-issued certificate to vote, to publish, to attend a religious service, or to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. You don’t even need one to drive on private property. Mandatory training as a precondition for carry is a permission slip dressed up as a public safety measure, and it functions exactly like the literacy tests and poll taxes of an earlier era — the right itself is technically intact, but exercising it is gated behind a fee, a paperwork process, and the discretion of a bureaucrat.
On the age question: 18-year-olds can join the military and be handed an M4. They can be sent overseas and authorized to use deadly force on behalf of the U.S. government. Telling that same 18-year-old he can’t carry a concealed handgun for personal defense at home without first paying $80 and sitting through a four-hour state-approved class is — at best — an unprincipled position.
And on the public safety claim writ large: 29 states have already done this. The data from those states does not show the bloodbath gun control groups predict every single time. Same warnings. Same headlines. Same outcome. None of it materializes.
What Happens Next
If the House overrides Stein’s veto, North Carolina joins the 60% of states that have moved past the permission-slip era of concealed carry. North Carolinians who want a permit for reciprocity or for the streamlined firearm purchase process can still get one. The training and education infrastructure doesn’t disappear — anyone who wants instruction can still seek it, voluntarily, the way reasonable adults do for everything else in their lives.
If the override fails, gun owners in the Tar Heel State continue navigating a permitting system that 29 other states have already determined is constitutionally and practically unjustifiable. The fight doesn’t end — it just resets to the next session.
For now, every North Carolinian who supports SB50 should be on the phone with their state representative this week. Calls and personalized emails carry weight; form letters do not. If your representative is one of the two Republicans who voted no on second reading, or one of the ten who abstained, that contact matters even more. You can find your representative at ncleg.gov.
This is the closest constitutional carry has been to crossing the finish line in North Carolina. After nine months of procedural limbo, that’s worth getting fired up about — and worth getting on the phone about.
