“The life you save may be your own.” – Flannery O’Connor

The Alabama Legislature looks like it is on the verge of passing a good law to empower state law enforcement to investigate and prosecute people in possession of a device involved in some of the state’s deadliest shootings over the last couple of years.

You may remember last September’s shooting outside a nightclub in Birmingham’s Five Points that killed four and injured 17 others.

Even closer to home, the people of Dadeville suffered through a similar tragedy almost two years ago when someone opened fire at a sweet 16 birthday party. Four people were killed – all between the ages of 17 and 23 – while 32 others were injured, and police investigators recovered 89 bullet casings at the scene, according to ABC News reporting.

A commonality between these two heartbreaking episodes was police believe a device commonly called a Glock switch was attached to the shooters’ handguns.

Glock switches alter the mechanical operation of a semiautomatic handgun to cause the gun to function like a fully automatic gun.

If you are not familiar with guns, this means the Glock switch can cause a handgun to fire continuously by squeezing the trigger and not letting go even though the gun was designed to fire only one shot when the trigger is squeezed with the shooter having to release the trigger before firing another shot.

The bill now working its way through the legislature makes the possession, use or selling of any equipment that could convert a pistol into a fully automatic weapon, referred to as a machine gun in the bill, a class C felony. A class C felony in Alabama carries a prison sentence of one to 10 years.

Some have questioned why Alabama should pass any legislation on this subject because the federal government already has a law in place saying possession of a Glock switch or similar device is illegal.

It is a legitimate question since this would seemingly be a redundant law. The answer is this potential law would allow state and local law enforcement agencies to investigate and charge people who possess these devices without having to wait for federal agencies to step in and conduct their own investigation.

This is important for two reasons. The first is, with President’s Donald Trump’s efforts to significantly downsize the scope of federal government agencies, there is reason to believe state and local governments will have to pick up the slack if federal law enforcement agencies are stretched thin with less personnel and funding.

The second reason is the prevalence of Glock switches has risen dramatically in recent years. Why? The answer is people can now use 3D printers to produce them relatively easily and cheaply.

A 2023 report from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives stated there was a 570 percent increase in the number of machine gun conversion parts taken into custody by the ATF between 2017 and 2021 than over the previous five-year period.

We are going to need as much law enforcement resources as we can get to tackle this problem.

A few people may argue this infringes on people’s second amendment civil liberty to bear arms. I find this argument unconvincing.

You have freedom of speech but cannot yell, “Fire!” in a crowded room. Police need a warrant to search your person or property but can conduct an immediate search when there is a belief you might pose an immediate and substantial threat to the public’s safety.

The same is true for your right to possess weapons. Reasonable exceptions have been built in over time.

A good example of this goes back to the heyday of the mob. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1939 that possession of a sawed-off or short-barrel shotgun without having government permission to do so was not protected by the second amendment since it had no relation in keeping a “well-regulated militia” – the often forgotten first part of the second amendment.

This means we already have federal laws on the books that prohibit the alteration of firearms that make them more dangerous along with decades-long Supreme Court approval of this prohibition.

I cannot find any upside in the state not passing this bill. It certainly is not sporting to blast away at a target as a test of skill. If you own a pistol for self-defense, you are more likely to endanger anyone else in the vicinity if you can empty your magazine within a few blinks of an eye when firing toward a would-be attacker.

This law may not reduce the total number of shooting incidents, but it could reduce the sheer number of casualties per shooting, which should be reason enough to pass it.