Michigan bills to require schools to send safe firearm storage literature home to parents advanced out of a state House committee Tuesday.
The package is part of the latest round of firearm legislation that gun violence prevention advocates are pushing lawmakers to adopt.
Saylor Reinders is with the group Michigan State University Students Demand Action. She said she’d like to see policies enacted to ban guns from polling places and reduce legal protections for gun manufacturers.
“The multi-faceted nature of this problem demands robust solutions. And today, we have an opportunity to advocate for the passage of more gun safety bills, as well as funding for community violence intervention and the continued implementation of bills signed last year,” Reinders said Tuesday during an advocacy event in Lansing.
State laws passed last year require safe storage of firearms when children are in the home and set out a legal path for removing guns from those deemed a threat to themselves or others.
Policies to tighten Michigan’s gun laws have typically faced opposition from Second Amendment activists who raise constitutional concerns.
State Representative Jaime Greene (R-Richmond) is minority vice chair of the House Education Committee.
Greene said lawmakers should focus on other legislation instead of the safe storage awareness bills.
“Will an email going home actually save children’s lives? And the answer is probably not. But we do have a solution. We do have a school safety package that is still waiting to have a hearing, have a committee hearing to be worked out,” Greene said.
She was referencing a bipartisan school safety bill package that has been before the House Education Committee for over a year. A handful of the bills in it received a first hearing in March.
Aside from the safe storage awareness bills, advocates are also pushing for legislation that would keep guns away from polling places. There are also efforts to ban so-called ghost guns that can be assembled from kits but don’t have serial numbers and can be very hard to trace.
Representative Felicia Brabec (D-Ann Arbor) said she also hopes to pass policies to end legal protections for gun manufacturers.
The polling places legislation is close to reaching the governor’s desk but the others haven’t made much progress.
Brabec says efforts are still underway.
“The legislative process is not linear. We can go back and forth and go in circles. And to me, part of the message is hang in there, we are still working and fighting,” she said.
Critics said the state should better enforce existing gun laws rather than write new ones.
