Memorandum of Support
DATE: February 8, 2022
TO: Honorable Members of the Alabama House of Representatives Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security
FROM: Alex Dorr, Executive Director, Alabama Firearms Association, and our members and supporters across Alabama
RE: Support for Constitutional Carry
Chairman Treadaway, Vice Chairman Farley and Ranking Member Jackson, on behalf of the Alabama Firearms Association and the moms, dads, grandparents, aunts and uncles that are our members and supporters who are busy working today and cannot afford to be here, I would like to express our support for Constitutional Carry.
Thank you for the opportunity to summarize our support for this beautiful piece of legislation.
Constitutional Carry makes the current CCP optional, just not mandatory, if you want to put on a jacket or vest over your weapon.
It strikes the requirement to notify officers that you are exercising your right to defend yourself, as most states don’t require.
It makes it legal for lawful people to carry weapons in vehicles without being forced to do what no criminal does, which is either disarm or make sure their thug friends carefully stow away their guns.
But while I have the opportunity, I’d also like to dispel some rumors and fake news you’ll hear about this bill during opponent testimony.
You’re likely going to hear opposition testimony from political law-enforcement groups or their associations.
They’ll likely come in here and tell you that there will be blood in the streets, how this will endanger their officers and how this is just horrible policy.
But their testimony won’t be based in reality.
A year after our fellow freedom-loving Americans in West Virginia passed it in 2015, WV State Police Spokesman Lt. Michael Baylous described the impact Constitutional Carry had on their state:
“When comparing the raw data from 2015 and 2016, there does not appear to be an overall significant difference in the number of violent crimes committed with firearms. Some counties experienced an increase in gun-related incidents, while others experienced a decrease.”
Idaho had a similar experience.
A July 1, 2017 article in Washington state’s Spokesman-Review covered this issue of what happened in Idaho after they passed Constitutional Carry.
The article states that before Constitutional Carry passed in Idaho, gun-control groups and political law-enforcement organizations predicted dire warnings about increasing violent crime rates.
But the hyperbolic projections of their worldview against firearm freedoms just never happened.
Nez Perce County Sheriff Joe Rodrigues stated that “nothing has changed,” and he also noted that the number of residents applying for concealed carry permits hadn’t dropped, either.
In most states where we’ve seen this bill passed, the chief of police associations are usually the most vocal opponents of 2nd Amendment rights, but this article went on to state that even the Idaho Chiefs of Police Association agreed that Constitutional Carry had not resulted in an increase in crime.
Objections to Constitutional Carry and most pro-gun pieces of legislation just aren’t based in reality.
We’ve heard these howls and screams against the restoration of Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights before, when concealed carry was sweeping America during the 1990’s and 2000’s.
Those warnings were wrong then, and they’re wrong now, because what they really were then and really are now are simply disguised attacks on the 2nd Amendment launched to try to stop and block the wonderful restoration of freedom that these bills represent.
Another objection you’ll hear from the opponents of freedom and our right to defend ourselves is that “the data supports the gun-control argument.”
But that isn’t true, either.
Turkey established gun-control in 1911. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated in the Armenian Genocide.
The Soviet Union established gun-control in 1929. Between 1929-1953, nearly 20 million dissidents were exterminated.
China established gun-control in 1935. Between 1948-1952, 20 million political dissidents were exterminated.
Guatemala established gun-control in 1964. Between 1964-1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians were rounded up and exterminated.
Uganda established gun-control in 1970. Between 1971-1979, 300,000 Christians rounded up and exterminated.
Cambodia established gun-control in 1956. Between 1975-1977, 1 million educated people were rounded up and exterminated.
I could go further, but that’s a collective total of nearly 43 million people that were killed by their own governments.
The fact of the matter is that governments, not thugs and criminals, are the biggest killers of innocent people.
A lot of silly gun-control activists and enemies of self-defense point at Australia and now New Zealand and Canada as examples of policies America should implement.
But the governments of Australia, New Zealand and Canada have not turned on their own citizens and started slaughtering them yet, but some have started internment camps under the guise of ‘public safety’ during their phony COVID lockdowns.
And this brings us back to square one and why our God-given right to self-defense is enshrined in the Bill of Rights and our Alabama Constitution in the first place.
They weren’t written so that we can always hunt deer. They weren’t even written so that we can always defend ourselves against thugs and murderers.
The 2nd Amendment and Article 1 Section 26 of the Alabama Constitution are about protecting people like me and people like Alabama Firearms Association members and supporters from people like you and whoever occupies the Governor’s mansion should you decide you want to go full-blown Chairman Mao.
So the people who quote Australia and New Zealand statistics are very short-sighted, and forget the horrifying lessons I already mentioned.
Another thing I’d like to point out are the “studies” you’ll be hearing from the opponents of freedom and our right to defend ourselves.
When you take a look at the numbers being spouted, you’ll find that virtually every one of them are authored by biased, agenda-driven “centers” or “think tanks” being funded by the very worst enemies of American freedom today, people like Mini-Mike Bloomberg and George Soros.
These studies are about as legitimate as the Washington Post’s claim to be an objective news organization!
These studies love to mix a little truth with a lot of fiction in order to support their own agenda, as they like to do with the example of Missouri.
Generally, the FBI’s annual violent crime report stats on their surface are favorable towards the expansion of firearms rights, especially when considered over the long-term.
But the reporting of raw numbers, in and of themselves, does not necessarily show a causal relationship.
Missouri passed Constitutional Carry in 2016 and the law went into effect in January of 2017.
2017’s violent crime numbers, according the studies you’ll hear by the opponents of the 2nd Amendment, were higher than 2016’s numbers.
Quoting these “studies,” Constitutional Carry opponents say that this is evidence of why we shouldn’t pass Constitutional Carry here in Alabama.
But the truthful words you’ll never hear from the lips of these opponents is that St Louis is a very violent city, often the most violent in America, and their violent crime rates make their entire state look bad!
In fact, if you watch the television reports out of St Louis you’ll see that they’ve had massive violent crime problems for the last several summers, and none of those reports have ever said that the problem was caused because the state removed the requirement for gun owners to get a CHL to carry firearms and that because they had removed that requirement for a CHL a lot of gun owners had all of a sudden become killers!
No, a whole city having massive violent crime rate problems is a hearts and minds and the evil therein problem of that city and its criminal residents, rather than a problem caused by the rest of the state’s gun-owner community.
Fanatical adherents of these “studies” would have people believe that removing someone’s requirement to get a CHL somehow causes them to become stone-cold killers, but that’s absurd.
And it sure doesn’t make “common sense.”
Constitutional Carry is an amazing restoration of freedom. It is common sense. Thank you to anyone who votes for this legislation.
Alabama’s best citizens want to see this committee pass it, and it will help empower good people to equalize the disparity of force between themselves and thugs or killers who want to attack innocent people.
I’d be happy to entertain any questions you might have.
For Freedom,
Alex Dorr
Executive Director
Alabama Firearms Association
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