Vote Comes as Hundreds of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action Volunteers Gather in Lansing for Annual Advocacy Day, and Just Two Hours After Governor Whitmer Addressed Gun Safety Advocates
LANSING, Mich. — Today, after hundreds of volunteers with the Michigan chapters of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, End Gun Violence Michigan, GIFFORDS, Brady United, and Team Enough, descended on the Michigan state capitol to meet with lawmakers and advocate for gun safety laws, Michigan House lawmakers voted to pass House Bill 4260/4261 that would sustain funding for critical community violence intervention (CVI) work. The vote came just hours after Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and legislative leaders including Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, Minority Leader Representative Ranjeev Puri, and Lansing Mayor Schor, co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, addressed the need for gun violence prevention legislation during the advocacy day rally.
“Community violence intervention organizations are on the frontlines in areas most impacted by gun violence, and sustaining their lifesaving work is essential to breaking cycles of violence,” said Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action. “As our movement made clear during today’s advocacy day at the Capitol, we are committed to ending all forms of gun violence—and without long-term support for CVI, that simply isn’t possible. We’re deeply grateful to the lawmakers who stood with us today and to the Michigan House for advancing this measure.”
“Today’s passage of additional funding for community violence intervention is a very positive move in order to continue the work that has already reduced gun violence in cities like Detroit,” said Pastor Barry Randolph of Church of the Messiah in Detroit, and End Gun Violence Michigan Board Member. “Murders in Detroit are at sixty year low, and we need that momentum to continue.”
“I advocated today to represent the voices of my generation: A generation that has grown up scanning for exits, flinching over loud noises, and texting our parents we love them before heading to school… just in case,” said Rebekah Schuler, a volunteer with Students Demand Action in Michigan and a survivor of the Oxford High School shooting in 2021. “We don’t want to live this way anymore and we’re calling on our Michigan lawmakers to stand with us. Help us hold the gun industry accountable for their role in America’s gun violence crisis — for creating a nation of survivors. Survivors like me.”
“We are all here to say, loud and clear: WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH,” said Jon Gold, member of GIFFORDS Gun Owners for Safety. “As a gun owner, I believe in responsibility and accountability. But right now, the gun industry enjoys special legal protections that make it nearly impossible for victims to hold bad actors accountable—even when there’s clear evidence of wrongdoing. As we lobby today — remembering who we’ve lost and what we’ve gained—let’s keep pushing forward. We’ve accomplished so much, but Michigan deserves better.”
“Community violence intervention programs work — plain and simple,” said Kris Brown, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “Cities across the country have seen a reduction in firearm injuries and deaths when we invest in culturally competent programs that focus on the community members most at risk of engaging in or becoming the target of gun violence. But too often these programs are underfunded. We must give community violence intervention programs the investment they deserve to create sustainable, life-saving success. Brady is thankful to all of the lawmakers and advocates who have helped advance this legislation.”
Community violence is a public health crisis that reaches across all levels of the socioeconomic spectrum. Deaths and injuries stemming from gun violence are estimated to cost around $557 billion annually. This violence also comes at the cost of community safety and the well-being of our children and families. The presence of violence in communities is associated with medical conditions, such as poor mental health, reduced cognitive functioning for children, and inequity in housing, economic opportunity, and educational attainment. Community-based violence intervention programs apply an effective, localized approach to gun violence prevention in communities disproportionately affected by gun violence. These programs play a crucial role in combating gun violence and need to be properly funded and sustained. Community-informed violence intervention programs have been shown to reduce firearm injuries and deaths.
In Michigan, approximately 1,421 people are killed by firearms every year – the majority of those deaths are firearm suicides. Black and brown communities disproportionately bear the burden of our country’s gun violence crisis every single day. Black Michiganders are 22 times more likely than white people to die by gun homicide.
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.
During the 2025 legislative session lawmakers should focus on creating a comprehensive state violence prevention toolkit, including passing policies to hold the gun industry accountable for their part in the gun violence epidemic and empower gun violence victims, which include legislation to crack down on the proliferation of unregulated and untraceable ghost guns.
More about gun violence in Michigan is available here.