After Dadeville, Alabama reaches sixth stage of grief: Doing nothing
This is an opinion column.
When three children and three adults died in a Nashville, Tenn. mass shooting, Gov. Kay Ivey ordered flags statewide lowered to half-staff in a memo called a “flag order.”
She’d done something similar after the mass murder in Uvalde.
But two days after a mass shooting in Dadeville killed four people and injured 32 others right here in her home state, Ivey issued another flag memo — only this time for Dadeville itself, not all of the state agencies she leads.
I’m not sure how many city flag poles there are in Dadeville, but in town of 3,000 people, I’m guessing it’s about five.
Less than 48 hours into this tragedy and our elected leaders were already doing, and saying. the least they could get away with.
Now, almost a week into the aftermath, they’ve progressed from as little as possible to doing nothing.
I shouldn’t pick on my home state.
Doing nothing is America’s sixth stage of grief after such mass murders.
PREVIOUS: Don’t look away from Dadeville
And I suppose a governor has to be careful with such pronouncements. If folks get used to lowering a flag for Alabama children killed with guns, who knows when we’d ever get the Ol’ Glory back to the top of that pole?
On Tuesday, the Alabama Legislature held a moment of silence for the victims of the shooting, which might be the most thoughtful form of doing nothing.
However, state Sen. Jay Hovey, R-Auburn, who represents Dadeville, opened his mouth and ruined it.
“I’m going to tell you now, and you’ll hear me say over and over again over the next years that we work together, that we’re never going to be able to legislate morality,” Hovey said Tuesday.
Hovey is new to the legislature, having won election only last year, so perhaps he’s behind the learning curve.
Because the Alabama Legislature tries to legislate morality all the time.
Not even two weeks ago, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall raided and shut down 14 electronic bingo halls in Jefferson County that he accused of illegal gambling, which is still a crime in most parts of the state.
And the same day Hovey proclaimed morality beyond the reach of the Alabama Senate, downstairs Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter said recreational marijuana would remain illegal as long as he is in charge.
“The Speaker won’t allow it on the floor,” Ledbetter told reporters, referring to himself.
Alabama lawmakers have legislated morality many times, including passing harsher penalties and mandatory minimums for fentanyl-related crimes this very session.
This is the same Alabama Legislature that, not so long ago, made it illegal to give an undocumented immigrant a ride to the store.
And it’s the same legislature that much more recently interfered in the medical decisions of trans youth because there’s no privacy they won’t invade to force their beliefs on anyone different.
Hovey and others in Montgomery would like you to think there’s nothing they can do about mass shootings. Instead, Hovey, says it’s up to communities and churches and hearts and minds.
“The evil in this world that continues to devastate the communities across the country can only be defeated in the hearts and minds and homes and churches of these communities,” he said.
According to Pew Research, Alabama is the most religious state in the country and has the second-highest regular church attendance of any state but Utah.
If churches were a mitigating factor in ending gun violence, Alabama would be one of the safest states in which to live.
But it’s not.
Alabama has the third-highest homicide rate in the nation, and we rank fourth in gun deaths.
Curiously, New Hampshire ranked lowest both in Pew’s religiosity index and in the CDCs data for homicides.
But churches aren’t part of our problem any more than they are a solution.
If you want to find the problem, look no further than Goat Hill.
Alabama lawmakers — and let’s be fair to Democrats, it’s the GOP supermajority we’re talking about — have done nothing to curb gun violence while doing everything they can to make firearms accessible and unrestricted.
Last year, over the objections of law enforcement, lawmakers repealed state laws requiring pistol permits. The new law requires anyone carrying a gun to tell police about it when stopped, but the law doesn’t include any sort of penalty for those who break it.
State Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, introduced a bill to add a fine to the law.
That bill died this week in committee.
“We have to figure out who we are serving,” England said. “Is it our citizens, or a special interest group that apparently won’t allow us to do any reasonable restrictions on firearms? To be honest with you, the NRA runs this building.”
England tried to do something.
He should have known better.
Alabama is firmly in the do-nothing stage of grief, and it will be stuck there until it progresses to the next.
Stage 7: Repeat.
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