Police in Birmingham, Alabama do not yet have any suspects in custody for the Saturday night shooting outside a hookah bar in the city’s Five Points South neighborhood that left four people dead and another 17 people wounded, but the city’s mayor and his fellow Democrats in the state legislature have been quick to blame the shooting, at least in part, on Alabama’s permitless carry law. 

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin called for a number of new gun control laws at both the state and federal level in response to the shooting, including a repeal of permitless carry.

 “We are prepared to be overly aggressive,” Woodfin said. “Dogmatic is you will and go after every shooter in the city, but as it stands, they can ride around with no permit.”

Woodfin asked members of Congress to reinstate a measure similar to the Assault Weapons Ban signed by President Clinton in the 1990s. It was lifted in 2004. 

Woodfin asked members of Congress to reinstate a measure similar to the Assault Weapons Ban signed by President Clinton in the 1990s. It was lifted in 2004.

“Our country, and not just our country, but the City of Birmingham in that 10-year window saw the lowest form of gun violence,” the mayor stated. “We don’t have any interest in this whole debate about Second Amendment rights. We don’t have any interest in people who want to protect their homes, militia, whatever else you want to say.”

Yeah, I’d say it’s obvious that Woodfin and his Democratic colleagues don’t have any interest in our Second Amendment rights if he’s talking about banning some of the most popular and commonly owned firearms in the country. Even though police believe handguns were used in the attack, Woodfin is using the violence to demand a ban on semi-automatic long guns. 

Woodfin’s assertion that Birmingham saw its lowest level of “gun violence” when the federal assault weapons ban was in effect is also dubious. According to the city’s homicide statistics, the “best” year for murders in Birmingham during the ban was in 2004, the year the ban expired. There were 64 homicides in Birmingham that year. Since the ban expired, Birmingham saw 64 homicies in 2010 and 2011, while recording 63 homicides in 2014. For the past ten years, however, there have been at least 100 homicides in the city each year. 

While homicides are increasing in Birmingham, the numbers are dropping dramatically in other citys in permitless carry states. Miami recorded the lowest number of murders since at least 1947 last year, while cities like Memphis, Dallas, San Antonio, Cleveland, and Columbus, Ohio have all seen homicides decline by more than 20% this year. 

The issue isn’t permitless carry. One big problem in Birmingham is the number of police officers in uniform. The city is short more than 250 officers, which means the city has a little more than half of the police force it’s budgeted. 

But that’s actually an improvement. As recently as June, police spokesman Truman Fitzgerald said the department was down 320 officers. By some estimates, that’s about half of a fully staffed BPD.

Fitzgerald says the understaffing has forced the department to adapt.

“It certainly changes the shifts that we’re working right now,” he said. “Our patrol officers are working 12-hour shifts. We have to pull from different resources, within our other units, to make operations flow smoothly.”

The staffing shortage has created the need for other operational changes.

“It’s easy to see what we were able to do when we had more officers, versus now,” he said. “And what I can attest to when we had more numbers … you were able to give individualized attention to certain areas and certain problems that are going on in the community.

“You saw more specialized patrols that were able to be sent out into the neighborhoods, versus now, when our officers are often going from call to call to call to call to call.”

Birmingham doesn’t need more gun laws. It needs more law enforcement, and the buck stops with Woodfin and the Birmingham City Council when it comes to the abhorrently low staffing levels in the Birmingham PD. If Woodfin wants to point the finger at someone for the rising rates of violent crime, he should find the nearest mirror instead of pontificating in front of the media’s microphones about the need to ban guns and repeal permitless carry.