When state lawmakers revoked North Carolina’s 104-year-old handgun permit law over the governor’s veto, opponents warned they were opening the door for more deadly weapons to end up in the wrong hands.

Search warrants linked to the high-profile killing of a UNC-Chapel Hill professor on campus Aug. 28 now suggest that’s what’s happened.

Tailei Qi, the graduate student accused of killing Professor Zijie Yan, could not legally possess or purchase a handgun, according to the search warrants first reported on by The News & Observer on Jan. 19. Qi, 34, is from China and in the United States on a nonimmigrant student visa, a residency status that doesn’t allow him to possess a firearm and ammunition, the warrants state.

The murder weapon in Yan’s killing has not been recovered. But Qi purchased a gun by connecting with a seller who investigators later interviewed in the Charlotte area. Investigators identified the seller from a note found in Qi’s apartment where he had written the man’s Carolina Firearms Forum username, the warrants state.

Such private sales do not require federal background checks, which would have turned up Qi’s residency status.

In March 2023, state legislators tore down the only official hurdle that would have prevented Qi from purchasing the gun. They terminated the handgun permit law that required county sheriffs to conduct background checks on handgun buyers. It also required sellers to see a gun permit before completing a transaction.

Five months later, Qi shot Yan several times in an office area at Caudill Labs, authorities say, throwing the campus into a lock-down chaos. A witness in an office next door told investigators that he heard Qi and Yan arguing, and then five gunshots. When he stepped out of his office, he saw Qi, a member of Yan’s lab, walk by with a gun in his hand, the warrants say.

Qi is now charged with first-degree murder and misdemeanor possession of a firearm on educational property. But in November he was declared mentally ill and unfit to continue with court proceedings.

Two evaluations found that he likely suffers from undiagnosed schizophrenia.

Search warrants say that 9mm shell casings, consistent with the Glock 43X that Qi purchased, were found where Yan was killed. Qi had twice rented and fired the same model handgun at a Wake County firearms range, and purchased 9mm ammunition there in the days leading up to the shooting, the warrants state.

A link to the abandoned permit law?

One of the lawmakers who opposed ending the state’s handgun permit law said evidence described in the warrants indicates the shooting might have been prevented if lawmakers had kept it in place.

“I expect this will be happening more frequently now that there is no longer this background check, and it’s really unfortunate and senseless,” said state Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat.

Rep. Allen Chesser, a Nash County Republican who sponsored legislation to end the handgun permits, said he couldn’t comment without having seen the warrants. The N&O provided them to him but he did not respond to another request for comment.

Orange County District Attorney Jeff Nieman, a Democrat, said the shooting points to a glaring gun safety problem.

“This exhibits why it is far past time for us to institute a system of universal background checks for firearm sales, period,” said Nieman.

Elimination of North Carolina’s required handgun permits passed last year, mostly along partisan lines. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper then vetoed the legislation.

But the bill became law after three Democrats — Rep. Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg County, who later switched her party enrollment to Republican; Michael Wray of Halifax County; and Cecil Brockman of Guilford County — were absent for a veto override vote.

Cotham and Brockman cited medical reasons, while Wray claimed a family emergency. Brockman and Wray had supported the legislation when it passed the House. Cotham told WSOC-TV in Charlotte after the veto override that she did not support ending the handgun permit requirement, which had been on the books since 1919.

At the time, Republicans lacked a supermajority in the legislature, but that changed days later when Cotham switched to the GOP.

Closing a loophole

Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have a background check system for handgun purchases, according to the Giffords Law Center, a nonprofit formed after U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, was nearly killed in a mass shooting in 2011.

Some have adopted or expanded background checks in recent years because the federal background check law doesn’t capture all gun sales, said Lindsay Nichols, the center’s policy director.

Qi’s gun purchase “falls within the loophole that is the reason why so many states are now actually passing laws similar to the very law that North Carolina recently repealed,” Nichols said.

State Republicans had sought to end the permitting system for years and in 2021 gained an ally in the NC Sheriffs’ Association, though some Democratic sheriffs representing more urban counties remained opposed. Sixty-four of the state’s 100 sheriffs were Republican after the 2022 election, according to Carolina Public Press.

It’s up to lawmakers to decide whether Yan’s killing exposed a dangerous loophole in gun regulations, said Iredell County Sheriff Darren Campbell, a Republican and president of the association.

The association supported ending the permits because the system was antiquated and the federal background checking system had improved, he said. The state law did have shortcomings. A state permit was good for five years, for example, which meant some convicted of a felony during that time could serve their sentences and still remain able to use it to buy a weapon, a Charlotte Observer analysis found.

But the federal system still does not require background checks for private sales, only those involving a federally licensed gun dealer.

“It seems pretty clear to me that had the (state) law been in effect and had this process been followed properly that they would have figured out that this guy was on a student visa and was prohibited from possessing guns,” said Andrew Willinger, executive director of Duke University’s Center for Firearms Law..

The gun range and the seller were not identified in the search warrants. No one else has been charged in the case.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office would have handled any permit request if the law had still been on the books. Sheriff Charles Blackwood said it would be “difficult to speculate” what might have happened given the gun used to kill Yan hasn’t been recovered.

Did the permits stop illegal purchases?

Polls show widespread support for universal checks, including among Republicans.

There is a federal felony charge for selling a firearm to a prohibited person, Willinger said, but sellers must know or suspect the purchaser can’t legally buy a gun to be found in violation.

Paul Valone, the president of Grass Roots North Carolina, a gun rights group that long fought to end the state handgun permits, said he doesn’t believe they would have impeded Qi from obtaining a gun. Many people weren’t aware of the permit requirement before it ended, he said.

Jeff Welty, a law professor at the UNC School of Government, said the small number of sellers charged with the misdemeanor of violating the permit law suggest few were aware of it.

“From the data available to me, it looks like only 23 such charges were brought statewide in 2022,” he said in an emailed response.

The pistol permit law has long been a hot topic among groups that oppose regulation of gun purchases, including the Carolina Firearms Forum that investigators say the person who sold Qi the handgun had used.

In one discussion thread at the site from 2021, most commenters complained about the law, though one saw it differently.

“If you think about it that’s really the only way a seller knows the buyer isn’t prohibited,” the commenter wrote. “Is it 100% fool proof? No, but it’s better than guessing.”

Database editor David Raynor contributed to this report.

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