Representative Larry G. Pittman
North Carolina General Assembly
House of Representatives
1321 Legislative Building
16 W. Jones Street
Raleigh, NC 27601-1096
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.
