NC: HB 246 The Gun Rights Amendment & HB 144, the Homeschool Education Tax Credit

 

Representative Larry G. Pittman

North Carolina General Assembly

House of Representatives

1321 Legislative Building

16 W. Jones Street

Raleigh, NC  27601-1096

919-715-2009

larry.pittman@ncleg.net

About time.

HB 144, the Homeschool Education Tax Credit, would give homeschool parents a non-refundable tax credit of $2,500 per year per child they educate at home.    This is based on the State’s figures of approximately $5,000 per year spent by the State per student in the government run schools.  It is a tax credit of half that amount each for homeschool kids.  It is meant to give some relief for homeschool parents who are paying their taxes to support a system of education for everyone else’s kids, while having to pay to educate their own kids on top of that.  I am considering similar legislation for parents who send their kids to private schools; but I think someone else may already be working on that.

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HB 246, The Gun Rights Amendment, would amend Article I, Section 30 of the State Constitution by removing language against concealed carry and replacing it with language that limits the places and situations where concealed carry may be prohibited, and commits the State never to confiscate our citizens’ weapons and never to cooperate with any other entity (such as the federal government or the UN) that might try to do so.  I think this one will have a lot of support, but may be held up in committee, also, just because the leadership will consider it too controversial and they don’t want to deal with any amendments to the State Constitution this year.  We’ll see.  Grass Roots North Carolina (GRNC) will support me on this one.

 

I have also prepared a companion bill, which would not be a constitutional amendment, to clarify further the rights of our citizen gun owners, and I’m waiting for it to come back from Bill Drafting now.  I’m calling it the Enabling Patriots Act.  I have worked very closely with Paul Valone, of GRNC, on this one.  It has been a grueling process trying to get these two gun bills right.  It took much longer than I expected to get them written, especially with everything else I am so busy doing.   When it is ready, that will make five bills on which I am the author and primary sponsor, all of which have to do with upholding our citizens’ rights, which is the only reason I came to Raleigh in the first place.