By John Sharp
Alabama state lawmakers return to Montgomery this week following their spring break and Nashville will loom large over gun-related matters expected to surface this week.
The nation’s latest deadly shooting on Monday occurred at a private religious grade school, prompting lawmakers nationwide to revisit the seemingly never-ending debate over gun control.
The two political parties remain split over gun rights and gun control, and those divides are playing out in Alabama. Democratic lawmakers are pitching for tighter gun restrictions at or near schools, but gun rights groups like Bama Carry are expressing concerns.
And in a Legislature with a Republican supermajority, those bills and others face uphill climbs.
“Certainly, I have concerns about any bill that seeks to control firearms or erode the Second Amendment, no matter how mundane or trivial it seems,” said state Rep. Mack Butler, R-Rainbow City. “A little erosion here, a little erosion there, and before you know it, you’re buried under an avalanche.”
Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, who is sponsoring a bill that could limit gun possessions on school properties that could spark the most passionate debate in Montgomery next week, said frustrations are likely to be expressed in the coming weeks.
“It gets to the point of when is enough, enough?” he said. “How much bloodshed is necessary to do the obvious things to stop this situation?”
Gun bills
The newest gun bills before the Legislature are surfacing less than a year after Republican lawmakers approved Alabama becoming the 25th state to have permitless carry – sometimes referred to as “constitutional carry” — despite concerns expressed by many law enforcement officers including sheriffs who are typically a strong GOP ally.
“The Alabama Legislature spoke loudly about its stand on the Second Amendment when it passed constitutional carry legislation last year, so any lawmaker who attempts to weaken our gun rights will quickly discover that dog won’t hunt,” said Republican Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth who, five years ago while serving in the Legislature, sponsored legislation that would allow teachers and administrators to be armed while at school if they had undergone appropriate firearms training.
A wild card could exist in the coming weeks in the form of a gun-related package set to be pushed out by the Alabama District Attorney’s Association.
The group of state prosecutors announced they are pushing for harsher penalties against convicted felons from possessing guns. And there is also a push from the organization to have enhanced penalties against any criminal who uses a gun to perpetrate their crime.
“I don’t think this is the climate right now to bring any soft-on-crime legislation,” said Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey, president of the statewide district attorney’s association.
Said Ainsworth, “Felons who are in possession of guns after their rights revoked must be punished harshly and without mercy.”
Legislation is also expected to surface to help sheriffs recoup lost revenues from the elimination of a pistol permit requirement. The Mobile County Sheriff’s Department, for instance, lost around $800,000 in permit revenues during the second half of last year.
The Association of County Commissions of Alabama is working to draft legislation that would supplement the lost permit funding to sheriff’s departments.
A few of the gun-related bills to have surfaced include:
- HB28, sponsored by England, removes a new section of Alabama law that exempts pistol permit owners from being allowed to carry firearms on school property. A hearing is scheduled on Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, and England calls the timing of the hearing occurring about one week after the Nashville shooting “a coincidence” but adds that “the likelihood that you introduce legislation that coincides with another school shooting, just kinds of points out that it happens too often here in America.”
- HB12, also sponsored by England, makes it a misdemeanor if, during a traffic stop, a person in possession of a firearm fails to inform a law enforcement officer that he or she has a concealed gun. Said England, “it’s about restoring balance to law enforcement and having them try to maintain public safety.”
- HB64, sponsored by Rep. Ron Bolton, R-Northport, makes it a Class C felony for an undocumented immigrant who is residing in the U.S. illegally, to be in possession of a firearm. Bolton, a former police captain, said the legislation would mirror federal law, but would allow prosecutors to pursue charges via state courts. “If we had it under state law, we’d handle it that way and not through federal court that makes it more cumbersome,” Bolton said. The legislation has support gun rights groups like Bama Carry.
- HB123, sponsored by Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile, assesses criminal penalties against parents or guardians who do not secure their weapons that are discovered in possession of their child on school property. The legislation, if adopted, makes it a Class C felony against a parent or guardian if their child takes their firearm to school if that weapon is not reasonably secured at home.
- HB181, sponsored by Butler, establishes the Second Amendment Financial Privacy Act, and prohibits a financial institution from disclosing a customer’s payment card records related to firearm transactions – with certain exceptions – and from engaging in discriminatory conduct toward a merchant or customer engaged in the transactions. Butler said the legislation is a “simple matter of privacy,” and that a gun owner should not have to worry about their financial records “being demanded by the government in retaliation.”
- SB126, sponsored by Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Birmingham, establishes the Gun Violence Protective Order Act. It would require gun owners who have been issued a court-imposed gun violence protective order to relinquish their firearms for at least one year. The legislation is surfacing at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court will consider a request from the Justice Department to make it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to own firearms.
- HB191, sponsored by Rep. Allen Treadaway, R-Birmingham, would impose harsh sentences on someone who possesses or uses a firearm during a crime that benefits a gang. Treadaway is a former assistant police chief in Birmingham, and his bill would impose a prison term of not less than 5 years if a gang member is found in possession of a gun. If the firearm is a short-barreled rifle or short-barreled shotgun, the prison term would be at least 10 years. If it’s a machine gun, or is equipped with a silencer, the prison term is at least 30 years.
School safety
Democratic leaders feel the state should have a robust discussion over guns on school properties in the aftermath of the deadly shooting in Nashville.
The shooting led to hundreds of school children, parents and teens marching on the Tennessee Capitol Thursday calling on a Republican-dominated legislature to push forward gun reform.
“Often times we talk about (school shootings) not happening in our community, but it’s 90 miles from my home to where this happened in Nashville,” said State Rep. Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, the Minority Leader in the Alabama House. “We should’ve started working on a path forward after Columbine (school shooting in 1999). No, you won’t eliminate (school shootings). But you can do things to make parents, families and communities feel safer.”
Statistics show that Alabama is battling an alarming rise in gun-related violence. The state ranks No. 5 in the U.S. – behind Mississippi, Louisiana, Wyoming, and Missouri — for the most shooting deaths per capita, at 23.6 gun-related deaths per 100,000 residents. From 2011-2020, gun-related deaths increased by 47% in Alabama, according to data by Everytown for Gun Safety.
“We’ve seen so many tragedies and it’s almost like we are becoming desensitized to it,” said England. “When I was growing up, we’d have tornado drills. We’d sit in the hallways and put our head between our legs to prepare ourselves for natural disasters. Now our kids go to school to do drills to deal with someone who brings an AR-15 to campus to kill them. It’s that stark reality that if it isn’t enough to motivate us to do something different, then I don’t know if it’s possible.”
England said he is hopeful HB28 will stir a wider conversation next week about guns, adding that “at some point, people got to be more important than guns. People also have to be more important than your ability to possess something like an AR-15 which has no other purpose than to kill.”
England’s proposal could have support from law enforcement. Earlier this year, Mobile Police Chief Paul Prine urged lawmakers to clear up the permitless carry law on whether guns should be allowed on school campuses.
“I would be an advocate of not allowing firearms on school property,” he said. “The fact we’re having this discussion today simply tells you there is a lot that is misunderstood (about the new law) and there is no clarity.”
Paul Arnold, vice-president of Bama Carry, said England’s legislation has the potential to criminalize law-abiding gun owners who drive too close to schools.
“There are only two reasons that someone would get a gun permit now, and one is to be within 1,000 feet of a school and the other is reciprocating (with other states),” Arnold said. “If you swing by to pick up a kid at school and you have your permit in your vehicle, you’re not a criminal. But (England) will make a lot of people criminals from just picking their kids up from school.”
Parental accountability
Arnold also said he has a problem with Drummond’s legislation, saying that it could be problematic to prove a parent allowed their child access to their guns if they were properly stored.
“Kids being kids, somehow they will know the combination lock,” he said.
Drummond said HB123 is aimed at assuring children are protected at school.
The bill was introduced before the Nashville tragedy occurred. In the approximately quarter-century since Columbine, there have been 376 school shootings in the U.S.
“We have a Second Amendment right and those students have a right to be safe on school campuses,” she said. “I look at it as a responsibility and accountability deal for parents and guardians to do the right thing and secure your weapons from children.”
The legislation might have some support from prosecutors. Bailey, the president of the DA association, said in “certain situations, parents should be held accountable and should be accountable.”
He added, “If they give their child a firearm to carry and the child knowingly carries them to school, (the parents) should be prosecuted.”
Criminal crackdown
Bailey also believes the timing is right to crack down on criminals and gun possession given a rise of gun violence in Alabama’s largest cities since the onset of the pandemic.
He said the goal is to prevent violent felons – those who commit murder, sexual assault, or robbery – from possessing weapons.
“We’re finding out that not much is happening to these individuals once police arrest them,” Bailey said. “They come out and recommit violent crimes.”
He said, as proposed, the legislation will issue a five-year “enhancement” penalty for violent felons who possess a gun.
Another enhancement under consideration is a 10-year prison sentence issued against anyone who commits a felony and is in possession of a gun at the time of the offense, Bailey said.
Arnold said that Bama Carry is concerned with the District Attorney’s draft legislation, which he said has language that “redefines” what constitutes an automatic firearm. He said the organization will refrain from further commenting until legislation is introduced.
Arnold said the general gun-related legislations pitched in Montgomery are a “knee jerk” reaction following the latest high-profile shooting.
“If the crime of murder doesn’t make anyone think twice, I don’t think these feel-good laws will have any effect,” said Arnold. “But they want to say, ‘we are doing something.’ The problem is that it’s not a gun problem. People lose compassion (for others), are taking God out of schools and are being raised in single-parent households. When I was going to school in the 70s, everyone had a rifle in the back of their vehicles.”
He added, “Something has changed, and it’s not the guns.”
Freedoms or restrictions
England, though, said it’s troubling when gun rights advocates are more concerned about their freedoms to carry weapons over the public health and safety of children.
Polling shows a divide among the political parties over their views about the role firearms play in American’s public health concerns. An Axios-Ipsos poll released on Feb. 23, shows that 35% of Democrats surveyed feel that guns and firearms access are the No. 1 health threat facing Americans, compared to only 4% of Republicans.
Firearms recently became the No. 1 cause of death for children and teens in the U.S., surpassing motor vehicle deaths and those cause by other injuries, according to an analysis by Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit providing health policy analysis and journalism.
“At some point, people got to be more important than guns,” said England, an assistant city attorney in Tuscaloosa. “People also have to be more important than your ability to possess something like an AR-15 that has no other purpose than to kill.”
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