The Deep South is known for being very pro-gun. It’s not surprising, really. Guns tend to follow rural politics and the South is known for rural areas. While they have their share of metropolises, they also have a lot more people making a living outside of those urban enclaves. As a result, they tend to be pretty pro-gun.

Yet of the states that made up the Confederacy, only Louisiana and Arkansas are constitutional carry states.

However, a bill in Alabama was filed to hopefully change that. Unfortunately, some don’t think it’s got a hope in hell of passing.

Alabama [Speaker of the] House Mac McCutcheon, R-Monrovia, discussed gun legislation that could appear before the House of Representatives this year.

In past sessions, constitutional carry legislation has made it out of the Alabama Senate, but stalls in the House. This year, Rep. Andrew Sorrell, R-Muscle Shoals, is carrying the bill in the House. APR asked McCutcheon whether he anticipates it passing this time.

“The mood would tend to be the same that it was in the past,” McCutcheon said. “There is a bill out there now for a lifetime carry permit and a procedural check for a permit.”

McCutcheon said that under that bill a state database would be used for granting concealed carry permits instead of a local database. Each sheriff of each county would be doing things the same way by ALEA (the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency) being involved in this.

McCutcheon said that the House is “taking a very serious look at that bill.”

State Sen. Randy Price, R-Opelika, and State Representative Proncey Robertson, R-Mt. Hope, pre-filed the lifetime permit bill that would establish a cohesive and statewide management level process for administering and managing concealed weapons permits in the state of Alabama. The National Rifle Association has endorsed this legislation.

The procedural bill was in response to several sheriffs apparently not conducting any kind of background check prior to issuing permits to residents in their counties. As a result, the ATF made it so Alabama carry permits could not be shown to skip the federally mandated background check for firearm purchases.

That’s probably why the NRA is backing it.

However, the downside is that with all the attention going toward these bills, there’s apparently no interest in pursuing constitutional carry.

That’s a shame.

The truth is, one shouldn’t interfere with the other. Make the permits available for people who want them for gun purchases or for those who travel and want to take advantage of reciprocity. For others, constitutional carry should be the rule of the day. No one should have to jump through those kinds of hoops to exercise their constitutionally-protected rights.

No, it doesn’t look like Alabama is going to pass any gun control, but I do also have to say that at some point, just not passing gun control can’t be deemed acceptable. Sure, in a contentious state where that’s taking all your effort, then yeah, holding the line is noble and worthy. However, that’s not happening in Alabama. They’re not that evenly divided on the issue.

So at some point, we need to talk about state lawmakers in places like Alabama and my own Georgia where they seem completely uninterested in passing pro-gun laws. Are they really pro-gun, or are they just not anti-gun enough to upset the status quo?