Alabama legislation to expand Medicaid coverage and regulate firearms outlaw are just two state bills being watched by children’s advocates. Lawmakers may try to prevent the use of devices to turn weapons into machine guns. Another measure may try to make Medicaid more available to pregnant women to reduce infant mortality. Aprielle Hartsfield is with Voices for Alabama’s Children. She says these ideas plus efforts to protect nutrition benefits are crucial to the state…
“Being proactive and keeping these economic family economic supports in place to help people with their nutrition, to help them get access to good food and nutritious food, that that really needs to be a top priority for everybody,” she said.
A bipartisan coalition in Alabama has come together to endorse a public safety package that would ban devices that convert semi-automatic weapons into machine guns. The group of mayors, lawmakers and law enforcement marks a rare consensus on gun restrictions and a departure from years of conflict about how to stem gun violence. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said Wednesday that "Even if there are some things we may not agree with, today is a major deal." Police believe the conversion devices dramatically increase gun violence casualties. Some Democrats expressed concern about a bill in the package that would increase legal protections for police officers accused of using excessive force. Aprielle Hartsfield says bills like these aren’t meant to infringe on Second Amendment rights.
“If children come across these firearms that there are safety measures in place that will prevent them from those tragic circumstances that we're reading more and more about in the news and, just really putting the responsibility on firearm owners to make sure that they are keeping their their what their weapons and their firearms safe and out of the reach of children,” she said.
Voices for Alabama’s Children are also watching action in Montgomery and Washington, D.C. that deal with cutting funding for nutrition programs like SNAP. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities says over 750,000 people in Alabama receive SNAP benefits to insure they have enough to eat every month. Apreille Hartsfield says denying children a chance at good nutrition can cause health issues down the road, which Alabama will have to pay for. Voices for Alabama’s Children has a list of about ten issues it’s watching in Montgomery.
