Opinion | Alabama doesn’t just have a gun problem

Two things can be true. 

We have a tendency to forget that way too often these days. But in complicated situations, or when dealing with complicated problems, there often is not one, clear answer. 

That is the case with gun violence. 

The people who say that more regulations would help curtail the violence and make it harder for criminals and bad actors to get their hands on weapons, and especially on modified, automatic weapons, are absolutely right. 

On the other hand, the people who say that we have a number of societal issues – mental health care, a lack of respect for human life, rampant poverty, a harmful love of firearms and a disregard for basic firearm safety – are also right. 

Because make no mistake about it, you don’t have three people hop out of a car in Birmingham, firing modified, automatic weapons into a crowd of people, not giving a good damn who they hit, injure or kill, in an apparent effort to kill just one specific person without all of those thing above playing a role. 

We have a gun problem. We have a trigger switch problem. We have a disregard for human life problem. And we have a love problem. 

Let’s start with the first couple – guns and illegal modifiers. 

On our podcast, Alabama Politics This Week, Montgomery County Sheriff Derrick Cunningham spent some time talking about the on-the-ground problems with Alabama’s gun laws and why they do, in fact, aid in our ongoing issues with gun violence. And also why they make cops less safer and how they make the job harder in general. 

For example, Cunningham pointed out that trigger switches, such as the ones believed to have been used in the Birmingham shootings, are illegal at the federal level, which does make them illegal in every state. But that’s only half the story. 

“The federal process is that you don’t go down to a magistrate sign a warrant and put him in jail,” Cunningham said of the current Alabama process for prosecuting someone caught with a trigger switch. “You got to go through an indictment type process where the case has to be indicted. It has to go before a federal grand jury and blah blah blah. By the time that you get that indictment out you’re looking at months, sometime probably a year. So that’s a long, tedious process in order to be able to get that person put in jail for possession of that switch or that device.”

That’s why proposed law change – sponsored by Phillip Ensler, D-Montgomery – is so important. 

Because as Cunningham also pointed out, a lot of people’s actions are determined by the consequences of those actions. 

As an example, he talked about Alabama’s new permitless carry law, which allows anyone to carry a firearm without a permit. Cunningham said it’s reshaping the way people think about firearms and the way people view his deputies’ effectiveness in dealing with dangerous situations. 

His department no longer has the ability to stop a person who’s brandishing a firearm. They have no authority to take a weapon from someone or to even check to see if that person should, in fact, be carrying a weapon. 

He said his department has received calls from citizens who are scared of unfamiliar people walking around their neighborhoods and carrying firearms. In the past, police could stop them, ask to see their pistol permit, and at least have some means to reassure the public that everything was OK, or to stop a problem before it turns into something very bad. 

That’s no longer the case. And the result has been less safe neighborhoods and less safe people and less safe law enforcement officers. 

It’s also helped further this insane diminishing of the dangers of firearms, moving people away from seeking out proper training for use and storage and moving them towards the even more dangerous belief that simply carrying a gun makes them safer, stronger and cooler. 

But those are not the only problems that lead to shootings like the one in Birmingham. Because long before you ever buy a gun and glock switch, turn it sideways and start firing a dozen rounds per second into a crowd of people, a disregard for human life has to enter into the equation. 

And such a disregard for human life can only come from feeling as if no one has ever valued your life. 

The simple fact here – and it’s truly anything but simple – is that we have way, way too many young people growing up in this state and this country who never experience love. Who are never cared for properly. Who are never shown that their lives matter to anyone. Who are treated as burdens and mouths to feed and another bill to pay. Who are left to fend for themselves at young ages, left to the streets and left for dead. 

We all know this is true. That well-loved, well-cared for children aren’t hoping out of cars with makeshift machine guns. 

And it’s no accident that incidents like this continue to happen in cities where the public school systems have been depleted, neglected and criminally under-funded for generations. 

Perhaps the most maddening aspect to all of this is that we have the ability and the know-how to dramatically curtail this sort of violence. It won’t be easy and it won’t be overnight, but we know we can do it. We’ve seen it happen in areas all around the country. 

We can fix our gun laws and restore some level of sanity to firearm ownership, while also better protecting police and citizens. We can better fund our schools and provide targeted resources to impoverished neighborhoods and communities, focusing on breaking cycles of poverty and showing young kids that someone does, in fact, give a damn about them. 

We can do that. If, you know, we actually do give a damn.