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In response to the Saturday night shootout in downtown Montgomery, Gov. Kay Ivey vows, “ALL options remain on the table.” Maybe she means it this time. Don’t hold your breath.
When it comes to gun violence and crime in Alabama red state politics, “all options” on the table always means everything but guns.
All you’ll find left on the Alabama table are thoughts, prayers and fearmongering politics.
We can always count on Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is now running for governor, and Attorney General Steve Marshall, who is now running for U.S. Senate, to jump on the table and spew tough-sounding phony solutions.
We’re up to our ears in firearms and up to our fears in gun violence.
To paraphrase a line from Alabama Political Reporter Josh Moon: ‘Gun companies and politicians use fear to sell the weapons that are creating havoc on our downtown streets.’
Here are a few excerpts from Moon’s opinion piece:
“I’ll never forget going to report on a murder that happened in a Montgomery housing project one day. A lady there, in an effort to demonstrate the prevalence of guns in her neighborhood, took some money from me—I think it was $20—and walked down the street. She returned a short time later with a gun—a .38-caliber revolver—and handed it to me.
“I handed it to a nearby cop and told him the story. He said, “She probably got change back.”
“You want to know why there was a shooting in downtown Montgomery on Saturday night?
“It’s because for a few generations now, we’ve pretended that there would be no consequences for disregarding, shoving aside, forgetting about and ignoring a whole bunch of kids. We failed them—that’s right, WE—in every way possible. Their parents failed them. Society failed them. The schools failed them. The safety net failed them. Elected officials failed them. Friends and neighbors failed them.
“In place of algebra and chemistry, they learned violence and anger. They learned how to do whatever it took to make money, earn street respect and stay alive. And we made accessing the tools to live that sort of life incredibly easy to get.”
Read all of Josh Moon’s column here.
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