LANSING, Mich. — Today, the Michigan chapters of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, both part of Everytown for Gun Safety’s grassroots network, issued the following statements after the Michigan Senate passed three critical gun violence prevention bills. The measures included legislation to crack down on the proliferation of unregulated and untraceable ghost guns (SB 331/332), legislation to ban the sale, purchase and transfer of bump stocks, auto sears and other devices whose sole purpose is to enable semiautomatic firearms to fire like machine guns (SB 224), and legislation to ban carrying firearms on Capitol grounds (SB 225/226). Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action volunteers testified on all three bills, which now head to the House.
“At 17, my son was badly injured with a ghost gun and suffers the consequences to this day. Michigan lawmakers have the opportunity to take action to ensure no other family suffers our fate or worse,” said Denise Wieck, a volunteer lead with Moms Demand Action and a gun violence survivor. “Today, Michigan Senators sent a clear message that they are committed to acting in the best interest of Michigan families and saving lives. We hope the House will follow suit and explicitly ban ghost guns. Our gun violence crisis is real and it is already here – immediate action is needed.”
“Gun violence is personal for students like me in Michigan. We’ve seen how a lock down drill can turn into a school shooting in a matter of seconds,” said Selene Koremenos-Tsebelis, a volunteer leader with the Washtenaw County Students Demand Action chapter. “That’s why it’s so encouraging to see Michigan lawmakers address America’s gun violence crisis with the urgency it deserves. The Senate has done the right thing by passing common sense gun safety legislation today and now the House must do that same.”
In Michigan, approximately 1,421 people are killed by firearms every year – the majority of those deaths are firearm suicides. After electing a gun-sense trifecta in 2022, legislators in Michigan took action to enact a comprehensive gun safety package that included multiple foundational gun safety policies, including an extreme risk law, secure storage requirements, a stronger background check system and a bipartisan law to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.
Just this past December during lame duck session, Michigan lawmakers passed legislation to facilitate Medicaid reimbursement for critical services provided by community violence intervention organizations, legislation to ensure crime guns and guns collected from buyback programs are destroyed, and legislation to require secure firearm storage notifications in schools.
While, after the 2024 elections, there is no longer a gun-sense majority in the legislature, regardless of the political makeup of the legislature, gun violence prevention remains unequivocally popular amongst Michiganders, and gun violence prevention is – and should always be – nonpartisan.
More about gun violence in Michigan is available here.