After a mass shooting in Birmingham Saturday night, the city’s mayor said gun laws, including Alabama’s permitless carry law and a failure to ban “Glock switches” at the state level, have tied his hands and hampered enforcement.
“We need the necessary tools,” Mayor Randall Woodfin said Sunday. “We don’t have home rule. I want to work with the state… to solve this problem.” Since then, several state officials and lawmakers have joined the call for a Glock switch ban along with specified penalties for possession and use of the item. The devices are illegal under federal law, though Woodfin said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms needs to be better funded to enforce federal gun laws.
This was the 404th mass shooting in the United States this year. Of those shootings, 21 have happened in Alabama. While not federally defined, any event where four or more people are shot is considered a mass shooting.
Here’s how Alabama’s gun laws are structured and how they compare to other states.