Quote of the Day
The biggest thing I’ve learned is to ask: Do our detectives have every available resource to investigate and make an arrest? We have reached more than a 90 percent clearance rate. That means if you kill somebody in the city, the Birmingham Police Department is making an arrest.
Perception and reputation are two intangibles that are part of this public safety conversation. The city of Birmingham had to get very serious about sending a signal to people, whether they live here or outside the city: If you commit gun violence, we are coming after you, and you will be held accountable.
Randall Woodfin
Mayor of Birmingham Alabama
September 1, 2026
Is Birmingham Bucking Its Long Struggle With Gun Violence?
Notice this was from The Trace and written by Chip Brownlee. I have quoted Brownlee before:
The second post is the reason I went looking for current Brownlee writings. I quoted Brownlee as saying:
One of the greatest, perhaps the most dangerous, foes that we face in the gun violence prevention movement is hopelessness. It’s a feeling that nothing can make this problem better.
I wondered if his concern about hopelessness had materialized. What appears to have happened, as least in part, is that I don’t see much said about gun restrictions as the path forward. But I also see him marking progress in reduced “gun violence” where the mechanism which achieved the reduction was things other than gun restrictions. And in fact, in this interview of the mayor, constitutional carry came to the state, and they still made tremendous progress in reduction the homicide rate. Of course it wasn’t called “constitutional carry,” The mayor said, “The state Legislature removed the requirement for concealed carry pistol permits.” But that Brownlee put this in print, in The Trace, is very telling. He is admitting the claimed goal of homicide reduction can be achieved by means other than, and even despite losses in, gun control.
Brownlee is realizing that gun control is not necessarily the answer to the stated goal of a safer society. Perhaps soon we can welcome him to the correct side of history, and he can leave his dark past behind.
They’d get so much more done in terms of “violence prevention” if they weren’t laser focussed on doing that one thing the Constitution says they can’t do (or conspire with others to do).
Or, for that matter, focusing on violence of every sort, not just the one that is “tool specific.”
As Deoxy says, “[S]o if I just bludgeon someone to death with a hammer, you don’t mind?”
Or it’s at least lower on the priority list? I am sure the bludgeonee would object just as strenuously as if he or she had been shot.
The problem started when the study of criminology was invented. What sort of conclusions can you draw when you only study bad people? Without a concomitant study of Hagiography (literally the study of saints, but here I mean the study of good people), how can we draw any legitimate conclusions when we only hear the self-serving words of the criminals?
“What sort of conclusions can you draw when you only study bad people?”
Well, when you’re talking about the police and dealing with crime, “bad people” is specifically who they are after – that is, it seems like “criminology” would work quite well when you have definitive proof (such as an obviously murdered corpse) that there is indeed a “criminal” running around that you want to catch.
Not so useful, perhaps, for many other areas for the reason you cite (and probably more reasons, besides), but for dealing with someone who has committed a crime (and is, therefore, a criminal), it seems pretty reasonable.
Follow the money. As long as there is NGO or non profit money available, Brownlee will be your intrepid journalist.
“If you commit gun violence, we are coming after you, and you will be held accountable.”
Ah, so if I just bludgeon someone to death with a hammer, you don’t mind?
No, that’s not logically required by what he said (assuming so is a logical fallacy), but there’s NO REASON to throw the word “gun” in there. ANY KIND of violence should result in the perp being “held accountable”!
Nonetheless, there is an implied exclusion in their statement.
I went to a Jesuit University. Admittedly my training in logic and philosophy is weaker than that of my predecessor students (Only one class in Logic and one class in philosophy vs one each year is the “tell”, but it seems to be, as the saying goes, “Light years ahead” of what the mass of college graduates ever got). As a Protestant, I think even that little training has stood me in good stead, over the decades. It has given me a good “Nose” for what a religion looks like, and a limited ability to see beyond what people say to what they mean by and want from their words.
That stuck out to me also.
Why single out guns and not address all homicides together?
The only reason I can see is politics and their agenda of control.
They still want all the guns. This is just a tactic.
I agree. The words may differ, but the melody remain the same.