The city of Birmingham, Alabama isn't one of my favorite places to visit. The traffic was awful.
Oh, yeah, the violent crime is pretty bad, too. It's so bad that the mayor just had to go out of his way to criticize the state's permitless carry law, blaming it for high-profile shootings in the past. He says the state needs to repeal it because of his city's violent crime problems. Well, about that...
You see, permitless or constitutional carry--whichever you prefer--doesn't actually impact criminals in any real way. Anyone who isn't allowed to own a gun can't lawfully carry one. Those guys have been carrying without a permit for decades. Permit requirements just put hurdles in the way of law-abiding gun owners.
But Mayor Randall Woodfin is sure that the state needs to repeal it.
Birmingham homicides are down 27 percent so far in 2025, fueled in part by a 23-day stretch with no homicides in the city.
As of Monday morning, the city had 16 homicides in the first 2 ½ months of 2025 compared to 22 for the same time period in 2024.
In late 2009 and early 2010, Birmingham went 39 days without a homicide. In 2014, the city went 31 days without a homicide.
“I think when criminals see that they will be held accountable and they won’t be able to commit a crime and go free to hang out that night or next weekend, I think it makes them think twice before they choose to commit a crime,’’ said Interim Police Chief Michael Pickett.
“I think that’s having an impact.”
Additionally, Pickett said, detectives have made arrests in 12 of the 16 homicides so far this year, for a 75 percent clearance rate.
...And, as of Monday, several of Birmingham’s Part 1 crimes -- homicides, robberies, burglaries, and auto thefts -- were down 10.2 percent, with numbers of each offense dropping double digits.
The number of aggravated assaults, however, are up with 331 compared to 308 at this time last year.
It should be noted that, of course, Alabama hasn't repealed permitless carry.
I'm going to be real here. I happen to think that the permitless carry law is why the numbers have dropped. However, I'm realistic enough to know that it's going to be difficult to prove it and that correlation doesn't equal causation. Plus, violent crime is far more complex than many want to believe, so I could well be wrong in my belief. It could be something else entirely.
What I do know, though, is that for people like Woodfin, more guns equal more crime, at least in their minds.
But while correlation doesn't equal causation, causation should lead to correlation.
At the very least, this major drop in homicides and most other violent crimes shows that permitless carry isn't having the effect that he and others told everyone it would. He wanted the repeal of the law because, as he framed it, settling things in Birmingham was impossible without that repeal. It just couldn't be done no matter what.
Well, yet again, about that...
It seems that, as per usual for anti-gun officials, he was wrong.