Montgomery is trying to do something about guns that the state hasn’t

City hall in Montomery, Alabama on Sept. 20, 2024. Montgomery city officials earlier this month approved an ordinance requiring those carrying concealed firearms to have photo identification. The attorney general’s office said the move violates state law. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)

Back in July, I wrote about a prefiled bill that would allow the governor and attorney general to appoint interim police chiefs for cities,  effectively allowing the state to take over their police departments.

The bill from Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, doesn’t name Montgomery explicitly. But lawmakers have signaled that’s who they have in mind.

At the time, I thought this meant state officials would take ownership of all the issues of crime and law enforcement staffing that many cities are struggling with, a responsibility they may not want.

I still think that. But as was pointed out to me after the column ran, a greater danger is that two white officials — one from Wilcox County (roughly 75 miles from Montgomery) and one from Marshall County (164 miles away) — could measure progress simply by ramping up the volume of arrests in a majority-Black city, without any sense of whether those arrests are actually warranted or effective.

The people of Montgomery would not only get their voices cut out of local governance. They could have a public safety policy less focused on safety in the city and more on posturing for GOP primary voters with no connections to Montgomery.

This should raise alarms among state officials, considering that young Black men are more likely to be killed by the police than any other group.

Will it? I have my doubts.

The Legislature has effectively unlimited power over the cities in this state. They’ve shown in the past that they will move to nullify the actions of elected local officials if they don’t like them.

And it’s hard to ignore that these actions from our majority-white Legislature tend to target majority-Black communities, whether it’s stopping Birmingham from setting a minimum wage or making it very hard for Black officials around the state to remove monuments to white supremacy.

It’s an imperious, arrogant attitude that refuses to allow Black communities to govern themselves as majority-white communities do. And Montgomery could see it happen again.

The Montgomery City Council approved an ordinance earlier this month allowing police officers to confiscate concealed weapons from people who lack a valid photo ID. A person who lost a firearm in this manner could retrieve their gun within 30 days by presenting proper identification, proof of ownership and paying a $150 fine.

It would be a weaker version of how law enforcement used to enforce the state’s concealed carry permit requirements. Without an ordinance in place, police could detain someone they suspected of planning harm. This proposal would allow police only to confiscate the weapon.

Montgomery is trying to find ways to cut its violent crimes. In June alone, Montgomery saw a triple homicide at a Hispanic grocery store and a mass shooting at a party.

The Montgomery Advertiser says the city is trying to address the problem by boosting police pay and funding violence reduction programs. But the ordinance does acknowledge one of the forces driving the violence we see: the ease of obtaining firearms in Alabama.

It needs to be shouted from the mountain tops and before every commercial during the Iron Bowl that Alabama has one of the nation’s leading death rates from firearms. Much of that is suicide. In 2021, firearms accounted for 76% of suicide deaths in the state. But don’t overlook the state’s homicide rate, the fourth-highest in the country. It’s gone from 8.1 per 100,000 in 2014 to 14.9 in 2022. Alabama’s firearm death rate has been in the top five of all states throughout that period. That’s up, too: from 16.9 in 2014 to 25.5 in 2022.

This should be a five-alarm fire for the people who make our laws. But it isn’t. In 2022, they did away with the concealed carry permit requirement over the objections of state sheriffs. They’ve slow-walked a bill from Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile, on gun storage, a proven way to cut firearm deaths.

City leaders seem to understand something about the danger of firearms that state officials can’t or won’t. Montgomery City Council President C.C. Calhoun pointed out that the Alabama Legislature’s decision to end concealed carry permit requirements in 2022 “took away an important tool for our officers.”

The state is very likely to challenge the city’s action. The Alabama Attorney General’s Office said the ordinance violates state law.

“The Code of Alabama plainly states that the Legislature is the sole regulator of firearms and related matters,” the office said the day city officials signed the measure.

If the Alabama attorney general doesn’t try to intervene, the odds are someone in the Legislature will introduce a bill to stop Montgomery from doing this.

That might be defensible if lawmakers were trying to treat gun violence seriously. Some are. Besides Drummond, Democratic Reps. Phillip Ensler and Kenyatté Hassell, both D-Montgomery, have both introduced legislation to control what ought to be noncontroversial items, like assault weapons and devices that turn guns into automatic firearms.

But it feels safe to say those bills will struggle in the Legislature, even after Saturday’s horrific shooting in Birmingham. Most lawmakers have shown no concern about widespread access to firearms.

And it will be telling if they see the real problem as a majority-Black city trying to do something about it.