Birmingham mayor calls for gun ban

The city of Birmingham, Alabama isn’t exactly Chicago or New York City when it comes to size, but it’s not exactly Lotsee, Oklahoma (population: 6) either.

Because it’s a good-sized city, it tends to have a lot of the problems one would associate with a larger city. That obviously includes crime.

In fact, now the mayor is using that crime rate to demand stricter gun control laws.

Since January 1, Birmingham Police have investigated 90 homicides to date in the city with 83 of those by guns, according to Mayor Randall Woodfin during Tuesday’s city council meeting.

This, as he reports that over 700 firearms have been taken off the streets in that same amount of time.

Woodfin is calling for stricter gun laws to get those weapons off the streets, while asking for more help from the community.

“I wake up every day thinking how can we address this?” Woodfin said.

At Tuesday’s meeting he had two police officers take in examples of the types of guns that they have confiscated to people could see what they look like – he says the most common ones are mini-Draco’s and the AR pistol. Woodfin said there is no use for them on the streets but harm.

No, that’s not true at all. There are plenty of uses for them; legitimate, law-abiding uses. Just because criminals are using them doesn’t mean no one else is.

As for Woodfin’s calls for gun control, they’re going to fall on deaf ears, as they should.

Look, Birmingham may be pretty rough, and the crime statistics say that it is, but just what gun control does Woodfin think will suddenly make this end?

It seems he wants to ban them.

“If you can’t support this ban that’s un-American because the whole idea is public safety,” Woodfin said. “Federal tax dollars, state tax dollars, local tax dollars, the root of what we do is public safety first.”

So, it’s un-American to want to uphold the actual Constitution? Seriously?

As for public safety, I took another look at the text of the Constitution. The term “public safety” appears exactly once, and that’s only in reference to suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus. That’s it. At no other point does it claim any other right can be suspended in the name of public safety, even the Second Amendment rights.

Further, the idea that you can ban these particular weapons and criminals not get their hands on them is absolutely insane.

On one hand, there are already plenty of them running around the state as it is. A ban now would, at best, simply keep law-abiding folks from buying any more of them. It won’t stop criminals from getting them at all. Even if they ran out of guns to steal, they’d just obtain them from out-of-state sources.

Further, these are easy to put together yourself, even without a “ghost gun” kit. How does Woodfin propose preventing that?

Look, Birmingham’s problems are significant, to be sure, and Woodfin isn’t a complete idiot. Yes, he’s calling for gun bans, but he’s also asking for community help. That’s where he should be directing his time and effort because that’s going to accomplish far more than anything else he’s talking about.

In fact, had he not called for the gun ban, I’d be celebrating him for talking common sense. Instead, he wants something he can’t have, then has the cajones to call it “un-American” if you oppose it.