Flowers and balloons are tied to a pole in downtown Montgomery on Oct. 8, 2025, near the scene of a mass shooting that took place on Oct. 4. Two people — Jeremiah Morris, 17, and Shalanda Williams, 43 — were killed in the shooting. Twelve other people were wounded. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
State Republicans had a consistent response to the awful shooting in Montgomery on Oct. 4.
From Gov. Kay Ivey down, Alabama’s white GOP elites lectured a majority-Black city about the importance of public safety.
“This simply should not be happening in our capital city or anywhere in our state for that matter,” Ivey said in the wake of the shooting.
And she’s right. It shouldn’t. But I’m not convinced that’s what they’re actually concerned about.
Power seems to be the real point of this “public safety” outrage.
What Montgomery’s critics seem to be angling for is a takeover of law enforcement in the city, akin to a proposal last year to have the governor and attorney general take over the Birmingham and Montgomery police departments. Under that proposal, a white Republican from Wilcox County and a white Republican from Marshall County would have controlled law enforcement in two majority-Black cities, denying Black residents input in their own governance.
It’s certainly not about public safety. No public safety plan is serious without a major effort to reduce the number of guns in the state. And so far, Ivey and her finger-wagging colleagues haven’t given us one.
Alabama has a gun problem. Our firearm death rates are some of the highest in the nation. In 2023, we lost 25.6 lives per 100,000 to gunfire, the fourth-highest rate in the United States. Over the last decade, Alabama has never ranker lower than fifth in the nation for gun violence.
You are more likely to lose your life to a bullet in Alabama than in New York, which is four times bigger than Alabama but has fewer gun deaths each year.
The difference is obvious. Gun laws.
New York state requires permits to carry concealed weapons. Dealers must run background checks at sale. Guns must be safely stored. New York forbids people from openly carrying guns in public. People can petition the courts to take the firearms of those who may be a threat to themselves or others.
Alabama does none of those things.
The Legislature has twice killed a bill from Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile, to effectively require gun-owning parents to keep their weapons stored. Lawmakers approved a state Glock switch ban this year, which is good, but it was less a new regulation than a way to speed arrests. Legislators also passed a bill allowing people to voluntarily surrender their guns if they think they will be a threat to other people, a law that will likely be ineffective.
And none of those proposals can undo the decades of permissive gun policies that make horrors like the one in Montgomery possible. Even as they scolded Montgomery leadership over violence, Alabama’s leaders ignored their role in fomenting it.
“Unfortunately, I still feel the need for the state to further intervene in Montgomery and to have an even greater role in leading public safety efforts in our capital city,” said Ivey, who signed a law in 2022 making it much easier for people who don’t need guns to get them, and bragged about it.
“Though the blame lies with those who carelessly pulled the triggers, I continue to be troubled by the city leadership’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge they have a serious problem,” said Attorney General Steve Marshall, who was conspicuously silent in 2022 as Ivey and the Legislature got rid of concealed carry permit requirements, over the objections of sheriffs.
“Local leaders must be willing to lead in order to stop the crime and violence,” said Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth, who cheered on the flood of guns in 2022, saying that permit requirements aimed at protecting safety were just a “gun tax.”
Neither Ivey nor Marshall nor Ainsworth pulled the triggers in Montgomery. But deadly weapons end up in the wrong hands because Alabama’s Republican leaders think gun ownership is a right above all others, even the right to live without violence.
And whether you agree with Montgomery’s crime-fighting strategies, it’s clear the city takes the issue seriously. Montgomery has boosted the local police budget by more than 26% over the last six years. Mayor Steven Reed noted that Alabama’s lax gun laws are a major driver of the violence. He also noted that when the city last year tried to impose a minor gun restriction to address the carnage, state leaders forced Montgomery to repeal it.
You get used to hypocrisy in Alabama politics. The senator, allegedly concerned about free speech on college campuses, wants people at universities expressing views contrary to his to be jailed. The governor who thinks the world of Alabama’s workforce thinks a whole lot less of it the instant workers show the slightest lack of deference to their self-evidently benevolent employers.
That’s what you get with a state government built to thwart the public will, not reflect it. Power matters far more than truth or consistency.
And if you want to use Montgomery’s tragedy to extend your power over Black Alabamians, then a flood of gun violence that owes a lot to your recklessness is rather useful.
From Alabama Reflector Post Url: Visit
Author: Brian Lyman