ALABAMA – Alabama lawmakers passed a bill today to allow people to purchase lifetime permits to carry concealed handguns and to standardize the background checks for permits across 67 counties.
The Alabama Uniform Concealed Carry Permit Act, by Sen. Randy Price, R-Opelika, and Rep. Proncey Robertson, R-Mount Hope, also sets up a database of people who are prohibited from carrying a firearm because of a state or federal criminal conviction or because of a mental illness adjudicated by a court.
The two lawmakers have been working on the bill for three years.
It would require the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to develop the database. Robertson, a retired police officer, said there’s no efficient way now for police to determine if someone they encounter is prohibited from having a gun.
“A lot of people believe that an officer can do that from the side of the road right now, and they really can’t,” Robertson said. “It takes some time to dig into that background. They can see arrests. But to know what the conviction was, the adjudicated case, is a completely different thing. And that’s what this new system will allow them to do.”
The information in the database would be confidential and only used for law enforcement except when a person is charged with a felony involving the use of a firearm.
The House passed the bill today by a vote of 69-18. The Senate had passed 25-6 a week ago. It goes to Gov. Kay Ivey, who could sign it into law.
“One of the reasons when we started this process was the safety,” Price said. “The men and women that go out across this state every day to make sure that you and your families are safe, to give them some tools to work with.”
Under current law, people can purchase one-year or five-year pistol permits from their county sheriffs. The bill would create the new option of a lifetime permit. It would cost $300, or $150 for people 60 and older.
Eighty percent of the revenue from lifetime permits would go to the sheriff’s office where the permit is bought. The other 20% would go to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to support the cost of the database.
For one-year and five-year permits, Robertson said the cost and funding distribution would not change because of the bill.
State law requires sheriffs to do background checks before issuing pistol permits. But Robertson said the law is vague and all sheriffs don’t necessarily do them the same way. Robertson said the bill would mandate specific steps in the background check and make them uniform across the state.
For those who get lifetime permits, sheriffs would conduct background checks at least every five years to make sure the permit-holder is still eligible to have a firearm.
But Robertson said for practical purposes, the database provides an ongoing background check. Courts would report the information to update the database for those prohibited from having firearms, which could lead to revocation of permits. The bill sets up a way for a person to appeal a revocation, denial, or listing in the prohibited persons database.
