Tommy Tuberville slammed over 'war zone' comments

Tommy Tuberville in 2008, Wikimedia Commons

Democratic state legislators have criticized comments from U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama labeling Montgomery as a ‘war zone.’

Lawmakers said that Tuberville is politicizing the situation, while also faulting Republicans for enacting laws that made the city more vulnerable to violent crime, particularly gun violence.

“Cities are not ‘war zones,’” said Rep. Kenyatte Hassell, D-Montgomery, in an interview on Monday. “It is an injustice to say that about any of our cities. We have working-class citizens who work in the city every day. I live in Montgomery. I don’t hear gun shots every day.”

Alabama’s senior senator made the remarks in a video released on Oct. 27, referencing a mass shooting that left two people dead and 12 injured.

“We are not a third world country,” Tuberville said in the video. “But Montgomery has been turned into a war zone. We must take ACTION to keep Alabamians safe.”

In the video Tuberville also said that “residents need to feel safe in our capital city, and right now that is not the case.” He then said he would help make the downtown area a “safe zone.”

The senator has had a history of making inflammatory and racist statements.

In 2022, he compared the descendants of those who were once enslaved to criminals. Earlier this year, Tuberville said in an interview that he would allow President Donald Trump latitude for his actions he wants to take against metropolitan areas that attract immigrants.

“‘President Trump can do anything he wants when it comes to the federal,” he said in an interview in June. “Again, these inner-city rats, they live off the federal government. And that’s one reason we’re $37 trillion in debt.’”

About two weeks earlier at a Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce event, Tuberville said he had received notice from Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, that additional FBI agents would be deployed to Montgomery.

“They will not be noticeable,” he said in an interview with the media following his speech. “There will be more investigative people, people coming in and backing up local law enforcement. They have done that in several cities; it is nothing new.”

Alabama has some of the nation’s highest mortality rates from firearms. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1,300 people died from gunfire in 2023, a rate of 25.6 per 100,000 that was the fourth-highest in the nation. The total number of gun deaths in Alabama was higher than in New York State, which has four times Alabama’s population.

Cities such as Montgomery, along with Birmingham and others, continue to deal with persistent crime, particularly with incidents that involve firearms. Democrats point to some of the laws enacted by the Legislature that made the state more vulnerable to gun violence.

In 2022, lawmakers repealed a law requiring Alabamians to purchase permits to carry a concealed weapon. Law enforcement said it endangered and have since lost a key source of revenue used for training and to buy equipment.

Republican lawmakers said they passed the legislation because residents should not have to pay for their constitutional right to carry a firearm.

“When you stop politicizing an issue, you can start to focus on what the major problem is, and if you talk to most law enforcement who are responsible for patrolling our streets, they will you the streets got much less safer once we passed permit less-carry because it became very difficult to differentiate who can legally carry and who can’t,” said Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, said in an interview on Monday.

In the spring, Republicans in the statehouse passed a series of measures that eliminated bail and enhanced penalties for people who were allegedly involved in crimes that involve firearms. Most Democrats opposed the proposals but for one that made it a state law to convert a semi-automatic pistol into a fully automatic weapon.

“If making more crimes and incarcerating people is the answer to the crime problem, then we should be the safest place in America, in the world,” England said. “The bottom line is, the same old approaches are producing the same, old results.”