Apr. 01, 2025

Note: This is an April Fool's Day joke-free zone. Nothing but news follows below.

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When the state's permitless-carry law went into effect, it meant that Alabamians, in Alabama, no longer need a permit to carry a concealed weapon or take their legal firearm in a vehicle. It did not mean, however, that people can bring their guns to military bases.

AL.com's Finn Lincoln reports that since that law took effect at the beginning of 2023, 99 people have been arrested for allegedly illegally taking guns to Redstone Arsenal. The frequency of the arrests is higher than at even the larger military bases in Alabama, and it's been going up. There have been 37 already this year.

Why that's the case is up for debate, but Redstone Deputy Police Chief Dennis Brown points to Redstone's high percentage of non-military commuters and the base's aggressive approach on the issue.

Brown said most of the cases involve external contractors who don't work on the base, and even people who are lost. It's a federal misdemeanor to bring an unapproved firearm onto the base, but in some cases the charges get a lot more serious when you also mix in possession of narcotics, drunk driving or outstanding tickets and warrants.

Finn spoke with a couple of people who said they mistakenly ended up at Redstone Arsenal with a firearm and spent hours or even days in jail while their cases were investigated and sorted out.

Parents of school-age children who'd like to use the state's new school-choice option: You have one more week to apply for an education savings account, reports AL.com's Rebecca Griesbach.

As you may recall, the CHOOSE Act provides students up to $7,000 in tax credits to be used for tuition to a private school, with lesser amounts available for home-schooled students.

The application process closes April 7 for next school year.

There are criteria that will give some students priority. The first 500 ESAs will go to students with disabilities. Others with some advantage in the distribution are some children of active-duty military members, siblings of other students in the program and low-income students.

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled that the Alabama attorney general can't prosecute people or groups who help women travel outside the state in order to have an abortion, reports The Associated Press.

There haven't been any such criminal cases, but state AG Steve Marshall had said he would be looking at whether helping an out-of-state abortion take place would violate the state's criminal conspiracy laws. The Yellowhammer Fund, which assists those seeking abortions, and some medical providers then sued Marshall over the issue.

In his ruling, Thompson said that prosecuting those cases would violate the First Amendment and the right to travel.

Two students were injured at Dothan Preparatory Academy as Monday's storms rolled through, reports AL.com's Carol Robinson.

The storm did include a tornado warning. The National Weather Service will investigate the effects of the storm to decide whether to confirm that it was a tornado that hit the school, damaged a roof and caused debris to fall.

The students were treated on the scene by paramedics.

In 1853 or 1854, self-taught artist Bill Traylor of Dallas County. Born into slavery, he moved at a young age to a Lowndes County plantation, where he stayed on after the war to work as a sharecropper. Late in his life he moved to Montgomery and started drawing and painting, developing a style that, along with a life experience that's extremely rare among prolific artists, caused his legacy to take off decades after his death in 1949.

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