Back in September, city councilors in Montgomery, Alabama adopted a local ordinance requiring gun owners to have a valid ID on them when carrying. Now the council is debating repealing the recently adopted measure after Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall warned officials that the ordinance violates the state’s firearm preemption law.
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The topic came up at the most recent city council meeting in Montgomery, where one of the ordinance’s original backers acknowledging that the measure is unenforceable.
Councilman Glenn Pruitt, who originally sponsored the ordinance, admitted this in the meeting, saying, “we wrote something that is in direct violation of state law,” and added that the ordinance “is not worth what it’s written on.”
However, south Montgomery resident Angela Exford came forward to speak in favor of the ordinance, saying she is “100%” in favor of it being enforced.
Exford described a recent night when her neighborhood became “a war zone” with “rapid gunfire from 8:00 until after midnight.”
Requiring gun owners to carry an ID with them isn’t going to stop criminals from turning her neighborhood into a shooting gallery. For that to happen police and prosecutors need to go after the trigger-pullers, not folks who are merely (and lawfully) carrying a firearm under the state’s Constitutional Carry statute.
Exford was followed by interim Police Chief James Grayboys, who also spoke in favor of the ordinance.
“Current state gun laws are not giving police the tools they need to control or prevent the growing incidents of gun violence,” Grayboys said.
He continued, “current permitless carry laws limit the actions police can take in regards to taking weapons from individuals that should not have them,” meaning police do not know if an individual is a felon or under a court order prohibiting them from possessing a firearm.
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Despite Grayboys complaint, merely carrying a firearm isn’t cause to stop someone in the first place. An officer must have reasonable suspicion that someone’s involved in criminal activity to initiate a stop, even in those states that require a carry permit in order to bear arms in public. And if an officer does have reasonable suspicion that the individual has been involved in a crime, it doesn’t matter if they’ve got their ID on them or not. That subject can still be searched, and if police find probable cause that the person is connected to criminal activity they can be arrested and charged.
Though Pruitt admitted the city’s ordinance is unenforceable, he and his colleagues haven’t taken steps to repeal the measure. Instead, he told residents that the council believes it can tweak the ordinance so it will stand up in court, and that the council will adopt those amendments at the city’s next council meeting on December 3.
I’m very curious to see what the council comes up with, because Alabama’s preemption law doesn’t give cities and counties much leeway. The statute specifically forbids political subdivisions from “touching in any way upon firearms, ammunition, and firearm accessories”, with very limited exceptions. Mongtomery can regulate the discharge of firearms within the city limits, so long as those regulations don’t intrude on the ability to discharge a gun in self-defense or defense of others, but it can’t enforce any local ordinance that touches on the possession or carrying of firearms.
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Instead of trying to find a way around Alabama’s preemption law, the more appropriate step for Montgomery officials would be to fully prosecute those who are caught illegally possessing or using a firearm in the commission of a crime instead of offering plea deals that result in a slap on the wrist and stint on probation. There’s no conflict with the state by enforcing the laws that are already in place, but any attempt to subvert or ignore Alabama’s preemption law isn’t going to end well for Montgomery officials or the city’s taxpayers.
