FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
State Representative Shane Stringer - Jeff Poor Show - Monday 9-23-24
[music] Welcome back to the Jeff Porchola from Talk1065, thanks for being with us on this Monday morning. Text line 251343010106. Keep them coming. We do appreciate the feedback. Still come on the program this morning. Gail Jackson from Huntsville, WVNN and the Yellhammer News. That's in the 11 o'clock hour. So please stay tuned for that. Joining us now on the line, he represents North Mobile County, part of Baldwin County. State representative Shane Stringer is on the line. Representative, good morning. How are you? Doing great, Gail. Thanks for having me. Thanks for making time. Well, I guess I will start here. The shooting Saturday night at five points south in Birmingham is kind of just a national story right now. I shouldn't be stunned, but it's kind of shameless is what it is. These lawmakers, well, to a particular, a Philip Insler who's made this his quest, but also anything they know is a minority leader. I mean, they are pointing at these Glockswitches and the Mayor Birmingham Glockswitches, Glockswitches, Glockswitches. There's a federal ban on these on the books. They demand a state ban and I don't, I mean, I don't know that this necessarily addresses the root of the problem to what led to that tragedy in Birmingham. Now, I mean, first and foremost, that is absolutely a senseless tragedy of happening up there and boils down to some some thugs that, you know, the city and the different agencies are going to have to address. I mean, we cannot keep kicking the can down the road and trying to blame everything on guns or Glockswitches or a $20 piece of plastic in the form of a permit. We have got to do proactive policing in these communities that, you know, we've got problems. We've got games. We've got, you know, just thugs that are out of control. I tell everybody that to me, these thugs are kind of like a small child that needs attention. You can, if you don't give them the attention they need, they're going to, they're going to demand it in the form of some violent acts or something. But if you'll address it and take care of them whenever you're running across them in your normal, everyday activities, you can typically address and slow or minimize some of this from happening. Let me say this, and it's a game. It's a game problem. Now, Sir Barfoot had that bill, and I, this, this is what that bill was meant for in these circumstances to go after this, this organized crime, and these, some of these cities, why aren't we talking about this at all? Why are we on this like weird sort of like permitless carry, Glockswitches, it's all the gun, and not, not addressing this aspect of it? Well, this is typically what we see. It's the blame game. Let's find the easy solution that, to fix this stuff, when there is no easy solution, you know, this is, this is a problem in a lot of different facets, whether it's the family element, it's the community element, it's a social economic problem. I mean, there's a lot of factors that play into these situations, but the fact is, we have got to address the problem, which is the actors, the people that are doing these evil acts, and, you know, we cannot legislate an evil heart among government. I can pass every law in the world, but that is not going to stop somebody evil from doing wrong. We're going to have to address these people, and I'm tired of hearing that our, you know, we can't put nobody in jail or prison because the prisons are overcrowded. That is not an excuse. Every part of the criminal justice system has a particular function to take out, and if I said that I wasn't going to arrest anybody as a police officer because the jails are full, well, that's not my job. I have to do my part. The judges have to do their part. The DA's office, the criminal justice, DOJ has to do their part. So a lot to this other than, you know, trying to blame everything on a gun or a $20 piece of plastic. Let's, uh, let me ask you this. So let's talk about the Glock switches and they're, well, this is kind of a twofold question that they're illegal in the eyes of a federal law. There's a statute on the books, right? So correct. Number one, if the state were to pass, well, number one, why aren't the feds enforcing? Do we even have any inkling of an idea of why the feds aren't more aggressive in pursuing these? And number two, it's a state passes its own ban. I mean, how is this any differ for when the state tried to pass its own immigration laws? And we're told that the feds had supremacy. Therefore, your immigration law is, is, you know, mood. If you have two levels of government trying to enforce the same law. And that's not uncommon. We hear that every, you know, that's an excuse every time we try to address a problem in Montgomery. But, you know, the fact is, um, I've, I've recommended it from day one that let's make stricter penalties on anybody that uses the Glock switch in the commission of a crime. Let's, let's add different penalties to them. But of course, the Democrats don't want to hear that. They want to, you know, their, their solution is let everybody, all these follow the fenders out of jail. And that's going to make us safer, which I don't absolutely don't know where they're getting their information or facts. So the block switch is already illegal through the federal government and they are pursuing these cases. I've heard from other law enforcement officers throughout the South and the federal government is prosecuting these cases as local authorities are bringing them to them. So I don't think that passing it under a state law is going to fix this problem. But yeah, this is and the way, the way some of your, I guess, Republican colleagues or even some conservative commentators, they're like, well, why don't we just do it? Just have it on the books just just to make them happy. But I really think that they're using that issue to not really address the fundamental problem, which is he got a gang problem in your city. And I guess the question would be like, how do you go about fixing that? Well, you just have to saturate these, these areas that you have to create a task force to address gains and gang activity in your city or in your community. That's common. That's what we do. And as you do that, you develop intel on these games and they've done it in mobile. You know, you go through and I think it was guerrilla records years ago, it got real big in mobile and mobile PD and so there are FBI and other agencies involved put together a task force. They put built their intel on who the key players were and who the problematic people were and they went after them and addressed them and called them in the commission of crimes and prosecuted them, sent them to prison and they just banned that gang. So you've got to be proactive in dealing with these gains and dealing with problems in your community. If you've got a problematic area, you've got to saturate that area and push that criminal element out or put them in jail, one or the other. Well, your colleague Alan Treadaway used to be assistant police chief in Birmingham. Since the culture is as such, there is absolutely no fear, concern whatsoever of law enforcement in these cities. Now, now we could talk about that, but that's a cultural problem. But the response from these cities, they don't ever address that. Like they don't, they don't, something happened when needs to, when Randall Woodford and Stephen Reed became mayor and over time, the trend has been, I don't know if it's like a policy function or something, but the trend has been a lot of mass exodus of law enforcement from the cities and a obviously a rise in crime. And we know like, I was at reading from another one of your colleagues wants to do some kind of takeover of police departments, but seriously, they look at this problem and I can see it becoming a problem in other places in the state representative. What do you, is this just, there's nothing at the state level that can be done here to tell these guys to get their act together or is it just, I mean, you know, elections have consequences. This is who they elected and we'll have to live with it. Well, I think you're exactly right. I think, you know, there's absolutely a shortage of officers in Birmingham and they're running skeleton crews from what I understand from, from officers I've spoke to up there. So they've got problems and a lot of that comes down to the morale of the department. And, you know, if you don't have a, in our society, you know, a person is considered innocent until proven guilty. Well, what we had gotten to at one point to appease a certain minority of our population, we would assume the officers guilty until proven innocent. And the officers are not taking that chance anymore. Their, the morale was low. There's, there's better paying jobs and they're leaving because they don't feel like the administration or the department stands behind them. And that's, that's a leadership problem. And, you know, whether it be in the mayor's leadership or the chief leadership, but they've got some leadership issues they need to address to get the morale and get people to want them to be police. There's plenty of people that want to be the police. They're just not doing it because they're scared that the administration or the city will not have their back in, you know, in tough calls. Enjoyed by state representative Shane Stringer here on the program. This very well may be a political scapegoating thing here, but are you sort of surprised like the way a lot of these guys are coming after some of these second amendment issues or they're downplaying the second amendment aspect of it. But like, if you're serious about a solution here, and if you take them at the ward and they deep down believe that whatever policies the state of Alabama have put in place is, you know, one of the reasons behind this, well, they're not, I mean, is it realistic to think that the current, the state of Alabama, the legislature, which has a Republican super majority is going to be very eager to pass a bunch of laws curbing gun rights. No, and I don't think so. I think that, you know, to be realistic about it, we're going to have to look at the root problems of a lot of these crimes. And this one, particularly, I think it's going to come back to gang activity. You know, given somebody, and truthfully, let's be truthful, we're addressing it with permits and stuff like that, all you're addressing is the law by the citizens because that's who gets permits. The criminals do not. So targeting law by the citizens that own guns is not the solution. We're going to have to find ways to address these criminals and the criminal element. And if it means building more prisons, then let's build them. Well, I don't even understand the purple it was carry argument that by nature, they didn't have to go down to the courthouse get a gun permit. So since they didn't have to do that, that they're going to go, it's it's open season on their their adversarial gang members or whatever. What am I missing here? I agree with you. I mean, a lot of people tend to forget that the permit only addressed the pistol when, you know, these thugs are hearing AR and AR style rifles, they're hearing short barrel rifles, short barrel shotgun. That stuff is not covered under a permit anyway. So this is not going to, you know, the permit stuff is nothing but a revenue situation that just raises revenue for sure apartments. And we put a grant process in place to help cover that. So and that money, there's still plenty of that money there. So obviously, you know, if it was that bad of a problem, that money would be gone and we'd be looking at other selections. And as far as the state response, I mean, if things got too out of control, and I'm not saying that this is what the governor should do, but I mean, you can always call it an actual guard. I mean, there is a state response, but that ought to be like, that ought to be like the last resort, right? And trying to like find something that's kind of in between seats, these problematic, look, it's what we talk a lot of your colleagues say this whenever I bring this up, representative elections have consequences. These are the people this leadership is elected by the people in these cities where they have these problems. And they have not made a change, they're uninterested in making a change. And that's sort of the way it's got to go for now, I guess. That is correct. And what we see in elections, a lot of times people vote on, you know, the person that they like the best or their personality or something about them that they like more than the other. And it's not always about the policies and the procedures and their way of thinking. And they better get to listening to some of that digging into a person to see where they stand on policies and procedures and what they want, because doing away with the second amendment is not going to be the solution to any of these. You know, Birmingham is going to have to, you know, do kind of, they could do what Montgomery's doing, which is they've created a task force, which is what I said earlier. They've got the Aliyah, members of Aliyah, they've got members of the Montgomery Police Department, the Sheriff's Department, and others that have created a task force to address some of the issues they're having in Montgomery. And that's what you do to fix some of these problems. And you go, you target and you go after these criminals. You arrest them just as bad as they are harassing the good citizens of Montgomery. Well, last question, we'll get you out of here on this. I mean, state government has to function. And there's, I don't know if you're aware there are Todd Stacey's, uh, uh, subscription websites, as there's a kind of a feud going on between David Bronner and the mayor of Montgomery over the out of control crime. Um, we heard the, there's a, like a bullet hole in one of these green rooftops, the RSA buildings that dominate the landscape in downtown Montgomery can state government function. And that, I mean, not just the legislature, but also the executive and judicial branches. If it's a quasi war zone and, and where you guys meet, uh, during session, a hundred percent we can. I mean, I've, I've been up there every year for the last seven years. And, you know, I, I actually go out and exercise, walk, jog, um, when I'm up there. And, you know, I feel safe. It's, um, you know, of course, I know how to protect myself and know what to look for. But, you know, they've got their problems and issues. Um, and I don't think it's to that point yet. You know, like you said earlier, I don't think it's where they need to call out the National Guard or anything like that. They may need to get a help from a leah and the sheriff's department and, and other agencies, but they're going to have to target these problematic areas. Uh, we've got predicted policing where computer systems that will predict where these crimes are going to happen, where they've already happened. And it can pretty much tell us what areas to target. And we're going to have to target them. We're going to have to get in those areas, saturate them, try to weed out these bad actors. Representative, you're always very generous with your time. Uh, and thanks for making time for us. Let's talk to you soon. Yes, sir. Thank you. Change string early, ladies and gentlemen, we're right back. This is F.M. Talk, one of those six, five. [Music]