After a mass shooting in Birmingham's Five Points South neighborhood last month, Mayor Randall Woodfin was quick to pin some of the blame on Alabama's gun laws. Woodfin took aim at the state's permitless carry laws, as well as the lack of a state-level law banning so-called Glock switches, which illegally convert semi-automatic striker-fired pistols into fully automatic machine guns, telling reporters, "We should not allow people to just ride around with any style of weapon …I don’t care what your politics are."

While the Democratic mayor, who was recently invited to the White House to stump for gun control, has focused his message on the supposed need for more restrictive gun laws in the state and at the federal level, it turns out that the first suspect arrested in connection with the killings couldn't lawfully possess a firearm. What's more, he likely would have been behind bars when the shooting took place, were it not for a sweetheart plea deal cut by prosecutors in Birmingham just last year. 

[Damien] McDaniel's criminal history started in 2019 when he was just 17 years old. He was arrested on two counts of attempted murder. He would later plead guilty to both counts in 2023 and be sentenced to 15 years in jail. 

According to court records, McDaniel received a split sentence. That means he was sentenced to 2 years jail time, and the other 13 years were suspended. He was also given credit for time served, meaning McDaniel was released on a three-year probation.

If McDaniel had been convicted of attempted murder at trial, he could have received life in prison. Instead, after prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty in exchange for what, on paper anyway, was a 15-year sentence, he essentially walked free on probation after spending a few years in jail awaiting trial. 

After McDaniel was arrested, Woodfin proclaimed that "violent criminals operating within Birmingham will be pursued RELENTLESSLY and brought to justice without delay," and that "these criminals are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." 

I wish that were the case, but it's certainly not true when it comes to McDaniel. Now that his alleged crimes have made national news I doubt that prosecutors or a local judge will go easy on him once more, but the fact remains that when Birmingham's criminal justice system had the opportunity to put him away for well over a decade for his attempted murder, prosecutors and judges repeatedly looked the other way at his transgressions. 

McDaniel was charged in Oct. 2019 with two counts of attempted murder and discharging firearm in occupied vehicle for shooting into a car with two people inside. Hours after his preliminary hearing in Jan. 2020, court records show he was stopped by Birmingham Police and found with two guns.

According to a motion to revoke bond filed days after that arrest, McDaniel told officers the guns belonged to him and that one was stolen out of Cleburne County. That motion also shared information about McDaniel’s juvenile record, including a “former charge for certain persons forbidden.” 

A hearing for the bond revocation was scheduled in Feb. 2020. McDaniel did not appear because he was in the custody of the Department of Youth Services following his arrest by BPD.

He was released after six months, according to court records, and in a hearing in Sept. 2020, McDaniel was released on bond with a GPS device and placed on home confinement.

Three months later in December, prosecutors filed a motion showing evidence McDaniel “has gone AWOL from the Electronic Monitoring Program.”

An email from a program administrator shared with the court revealed McDaniel’s aunt removed his GPS device “because she was mad at [McDaniel’s mother] so she took it out on [McDaniel]” and threw the device in the trash can.

Even if the courts bought the excuse that McDaniel's aunt removed his GPS device to punish McDaniel's mom (which seems awfully sketchy to me), why didn't McDaniel himself report any of this to prosecutors at the time? 

Instead of demanding new laws restricting legal gun owners and blaming Second Amendment supporters for the rise in violent crime in his city, Woodfin should be calling out the court system for releasing a violent offender with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Alabama lawmakers don't need to repeal the state's permitless carry law, but the legislature should absolutely take steps to ensure that violent offenders don't get off with time served and a stern warning when the law carries much stiffer punishments. McDaniel was already prohibited by law from possessing a firearm, so this is yet another example where simply enforcing the laws already in place would have been much more effective than slapping another gun control restriction on the books.