The idea of a state like Alabama becoming a constitutional carry state wasn’t shocking. It’s a pro-gun state with pro-gun lawmakers, so it was inevitable that it would happen, and it did.
Like most states, though, there will always be a few places that gripe about the change. In Alabama, we’d expect to hear it from local officials in Birmingham or Montgomery.
Yet it seems a police chief in tiny little Bessemer, Alabama thinks that constitutional carry is cramping his ability to do his job.
Bessemer Police Chief Mike Wood addressed the media Tuesday following deadly shootings over the weekend. Wood said the legislature’s move to allow people to carry guns without a concealed carry permit has impacted efforts to reduce crime.
“We have been hindered by legislation that has been passed in the state of Alabama, taking away pistol permits,” Wood said.
The Alabama legislature passed a bill removing the requirement of a concealed carry permit in 2022. The law went into effect in January 2023.
“People are going to say, ‘You have the right to carry guns,” Wood said. “I agree. You have the right to carry a gun, but I also agree you need a background check. You don’t need to be an 18-year-old child that doesn’t know enough about life to be out here carrying guns.”
“You see what happens,” he added. “We’re dealing with conflict with guns, and that’s not acceptable.”
Alabama did not and does not require a permit for open carry.
In one of the shootings that left three dead in Bessemer over the weekend, a man out on bond for the shooting death of a child is believed to be the shooter. Raukeem Cunningham is now in jail in Jefferson County, facing capital murder.
It sounds like he shouldn’t have been allowed out on bond, then.
Bessemer has a population of around 26,000, which is not the size place you expect to see this nonsense. However, it’s a Birmingham suburb, so it’s not nearly as shocking as it might otherwise have been.
But what about what Wood said?
Well, people who buy guns lawfully are generally doing so through gun stores. They undergo background checks, so he doesn’t have to worry there. Most people who buy guns are doing it there, which means people under 21 aren’t getting guns lawfully in massive droves, thereby making it fairly uncommon that an “18-year-old child that doesn’t know enough about life” to be carrying in the first place.
Wood continued:
Wood said while there is a culture problem leading to gun violence, concealed carry permits were a way for police to arrest people before crimes were committed.
“They might get a gun, but if they’re on their way to commit a shooting and we stop them and they don’t have a permit for that gun, guess what? We can take him to jail,” he said. “It’s a misdemeanor. Correct. But it just stopped a felony from occurring, or a robbery, or something else.”
If they’re a convicted felon, you can arrest them for a felony. In a town like Bessemer, I suspect police know most of the frequent fliers well enough to make that arrest in the first place.
But let’s also note that we’ve seen permitless carry in some way, shape, or form be enacted all across the nation over the last few years, and guess what we don’t see? Homicide rates increasing. Quite the contrary, they seem to go down.
Now, that’s not enough evidence to say that constitutional carry reduces homicides in any definitive manner, but it is enough to suggest that Wood is pulling stuff out of his posterior here.
What’s more, he doesn’t seem to suggest there was some kind of contact between any of the shooting suspects and police leading up to the incidents in question. As such, this is kind of a moot point, isn’t it? Sure, he could make that argument if police had seen the shooters an hour earlier but couldn’t do anything because of the law, but there’s no evidence they did.
The truth is that based on other comments in that piece, Wood thinks his authority as a police officer ultimately trumps your right to keep and bear arms. He figures he should personally approve of every person in a given space being able to carry a firearm, and that’s just not how rights work. If someone is a criminal, that’s one thing, but the criminals are carrying and have been since long before Alabama passed constitutional carry.
And that will probably fly in the suburbs of Birmingham.
It just doesn’t fly in most other parts of Alabama.
