Ivey calls public safety her top priority for the 2025 session

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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Calling public safety her top priority for the session, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey backed on Tuesday a slate of bills that include a ban on Glock switches, an effort to boost police ranks and an attempt to focus prison space on the most violent offenders.

“A safe Alabama is a secure future for Alabama, and a secured future is our goal,” Ivey said in her State of the State address on the opening night of the 2025 legislative session.

The proposals come in the wake of mass shootings that rattled Alabama cities, including the shooting deaths of four people outside a Birmingham nightclub in September. The package of bills includes a ban on Glock switches and other conversion devices that make semiautomatic weapons fire like machine guns. The devices cause a rapid, hard-to-control spray of bullets, meaning more victims and more bystanders are being wounded or killed, police say.

The package includes a mixture of tough-on-crime measures, efforts to assist police officers and a limited sentencing reform measure.

One bill would give automatic sentence enhancements to felons convicted of certain gun crimes. Another, in an effort to recruit and retain police officers, would provide college scholarships to their dependents. The governor also announced a “Back the Blue Legal Protections” bill to provide protections for police officers facing use of force cases, although the details of that proposal were not available Tuesday night.

The governor also threw her support to legislation that would allow a small number of nonviolent prisoners to seek review of lengthy sentences handed down under Alabama’s stringent habitual offender law. The governor called it a “common sense reform.” Advocacy groups have long urged Alabama to enact the measure sometimes called the “Second Chance” bill.

Elaine Burdeshaw, policy director of justice nonprofit Alabama Appleseed, said the proposal is about “shepherding precious state resources in a smarter way” as well as ”redemption for those who have paid their debt.”

Ivey in her speech gave a nod to a number of recent GOP priorities including immigration, the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms and legislation that could limit the recognition of transgender identities.

Ivey promised to sign legislation, if approved, that would write definitions of man and woman into state law based on reproductive organs and not gender identity. The legislation dubbed “What is a Woman?” failed to win final approval last year, but Ivey said she looked forward to lawmakers getting the bill to her desk this year.

“There are only two genders: male and female,” Ivey said.

The governor also pledged the state’s help to President Donald Trump’s efforts on immigration efforts.

The 80-year-old governor invoked her occasional nickname of MeeMaw, originally bestowed on her by critics, to swat down speculation about her age and also lean into her image as a straight-talker.

The governor, who was last elected in 2022, has she said intends to finish her four-year term.

“In Alabama politics, we don’t exactly follow the rule of never asking a lady her age, and that’s OK,” Ivey said. “So, while we are on my age, I will share one of its many benefits: MeeMaw will tell you exactly like it is.”