State Rep. Shane Stringer (R-Citronelle) is pushing back against calls for more gun control that have come in response to recent shootings in some of Alabama’s biggest cities.
A shooting in Birmingham left four dead and 24 others injured Saturday night. Officials say the shooting was not random but an “isolated incident.”
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin reacted to the news during a press conference Sunday and called for more gun control, including a ban on Glock switches that allows some handguns to fire automatically with just one pull of the trigger.
“We don’t have any interest in this whole debate about Second Amendment rights,” Woodfin said. “We don’t have any interest in people wanting to protect their homes, militia, whatever else you want to say. There’s a certain element in this city, there’s a certain element in this community, who are too comfortable riding around with semi-automatic weapons, automatic weapons, conversions, switches and everything else whose only intent, hellbent intent, is to harm people, shoot people, kill people.”
During an appearance on Monday’s “The Jeff Poor Show” on FM Talk 106.5, Stringer said that more gun control isn’t a real solution.
“We cannot keep kicking the can down the road and trying to blame everything on guns or a Glock switch or a $20 piece of plastic in the form of a permit,” Stringer said. “We have got to do proactive policing in these communities…we’ve got gangs, we’ve got just thugs that are out of control.”
The state lawmaker said that some just want to find an “easy solution” when there is no easy solution.
“This is a problem with a lot of different facets, whether it’s the family element, it’s the community element, it’s a social, economic problem. There’s a lot of factors that play into these situations, but the fact is, we have got to address the problem, which is the actors, the people that are doing these evil acts. And you know, we cannot legislate an evil heart in Montgomery.”
Stringer said one thing the Legislature can do is add tougher penalties on these type of crimes.
“I’ve recommended it from day one that let’s make stricter penalties on anybody that uses the Glock switch in the commission of a crime,” he said. Let’s add stiffer penalties to them. But of course, the Democrats don’t want to hear that. Their solution is let everybody, all these follow defenders out of jail, and that’s going to make us safer, which I absolutely don’t know where they’re getting their information or facts.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
