Implications of the New York State Bar-Bonding Law for Children and Youths to Protect Guns at Schools and Other Public Spaces
The effect of the Supreme Court decision that allowed Americans to arm themselves in public and overturn a New York State law that banned most people from doing that was blunted by New Jersey.
The bill would bar handgun use in public spaces, including bars, beaches, stadiums, day care centers and private establishments, according to a draft of the bill.
The Supreme Court invalidated a decades-old New York law in May that banned gun purchases in the state and left it to states to enforce their own gun laws.
After a 15-year-old boy fatally shot four students and injured six others at Oxford High School in 2015, the pressure on policymakers to strengthen the state’s gun laws increased. The shooting prompted US Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan, to introduce federal legislation in December 2021 that would require gun owners to secure firearms away from a child if there’s potential access to them. The bill did not advance in Congress.
We tell our kids it will be okay. We say that all the time,” Whitmer said at a press conference Tuesday. Words are not good enough. We must act.
The State of the Art: Gun Laws in Michigan and their Implications for the First Preterm Legislative Sevection of the Second Amendment
Following the midterm election, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January, ensuring no new gun restrictions are likely to be considered at the national level.
Those measures would require the secure storage of firearms and ammunition; universal background checks for gun purchases; and create an extreme risk protection order, or “red flag law”, which allows courts to temporarily seize firearms from anyone believed to be a danger to themselves or others.
“Whether it’s mass shootings, homicides or suicides, we know there is not one bill or one policy that can make all of that go away overnight,” said state Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks Tuesday.
Brinks said we can act to improve the lives of the people in our state and prevent tragedies like this in the future.
There is a caveat to whether the gun laws proposed in Michigan can be effective, according to Geller. She said people must be aware of what steps to take when someone shows signs of dangerous behavior, if they don’t have enough funding.
Red flags, safe storage laws, and similar measures have been proposed before in Michigan, but they have not been successful.
There is no more time for thoughts or prayers. We have a unique opportunity to save lives. We are going to do that over the next few weeks.
The Red Flag Proposal in Michigan, the Case of Michael McRae, a Black American Shooter, and Everytown for Gun Safety
Three specific policies included in Thursday’s package have been proven to be effective in lowering gun violence rates, according to a study by Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit focused on gun violence prevention.
“It’s better to start enacting these reforms and start having less mass shootings than it is to sit in silence and do nothing,” said Annie Heitmeier, a third-year student at MSU and a volunteer with Students Demand Action, a movement pushing for gun control.
“We’ve had bills like this introduced before in Michigan and sometimes they don’t get much traction, they don’t go very far, or they die in committee. I’m hoping that this time will be different,” Heitmeier said.
Red flag laws failed to identify the shooter who targeted Black Americans at a Buffalo grocery store last May. The shooter, who killed eight people at a FedEx facility in 2021,was not identified by a red flag law in Indiana. The law has since been tweaked.
Prosecutors alleged the Oxford gunman’s father bought the gun used in the attack and his parents gave it to him as an early Christmas gift, CNN previously reported. The parents are accused of giving their son unfettered access to the gun, which resulted in his death.
McRae, the accused MSU gunman who died by suicide after the shooting, was arrested and charged in 2019 for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit – a felony that would have prevented him from being able to buy a gun if he were convicted. After being indicted, he pleaded guilty to a count of a loaded gun and spent a year and a half on house arrest.
The father told CNN that his son became bitter and angry after his mother died of a stroke, and he didn’t care about anything anymore. He had a note in his pocket that said he was going to shoot people in New Jersey.
Police took a gun away from my son a few years ago, stated Michael McRae. He said he believed his son had obtained another gun, but kept it in his room and denied that he had it, CNN has reported.
Michigan’s red flag proposal would allow law enforcement, family members or a roommate to petition a judge to temporarily seize a person’s firearms if they are deemed a risk.
The law enforcement agencies can’t be involved in the petitioning of a judge. But it says a petition must prove the person generally has a history of use or threat of violence against themselves or others.
“With the evidence that has been provided in this case, that family member or law enforcement could certainly petition for an extreme risk protection order if they knew that this individual was a threat to the community or himself,” Geller said, referring to McRae.
Stop the violence and save lives, that’s what it’s about: How gun laws should be enforced, but when laws aren’t
“Despite pleas from Oxford families, these issues never even got a hearing in the last legislature,” Whitmer said during the January 25 address. Let’s change that this year. Stop the violence and save lives, that’s what it’s about.
The package of bills had been in the works for several weeks before the shooting, but Senate Democrats had a critical opportunity to take action last week.
But there isn’t one gun policy alone that is going to reduce or end all gun violence, according to April M. Zeoli, an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at MSU.
Gun violence is a complicated issue that requires a multidisciplinary approach by policymakers, law enforcement and the medical community, experts told CNN.
“It’s gun homicides, community violence, police-involved shootings, domestic-violence homicides, mass shootings,” according to Geller. There are different policies used to address gun violence.
If the public is uninformed of the potential risk, or rejects gun control measures, or law enforcement refuses to enforce the law, it could be rendered useless, experts have previously told CNN.
There have already been shootings at US schools in the first months of the year and more than 400 kids have been killed by guns in America. The Gun Violence Archive states that the number of child gun deaths has increased.
The first week of March marked the record time for America to reach a number of mass shooting deaths, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
These tragedies should be a call to action for our political leaders. We need a change to US gun laws. The cost of political inaction on preventing gun violence is increasingly, tragically clear,” Brown said.
If elected officials implement the bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazine sales that can make a difference, there are other real solutions and tools that can be used.
There are about 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey. The United States has more people with guns than any other nation. And about 44% of US adults live in a household with a gun, and about one-third own one personally, according to a November 2020 Gallup survey.
There has been a significant increase in gun violence activism in Democratic politics, with President Joe Biden frequently complaining about Congress failing to pass common sense measures after multiple mass shootings this year.
The first Member of Generation Z to be elected to Congress centered his campaign on ending gun violence in the US while finding support from young voters who had grown up as part of the mass shooting generation.
We have wondered why in our lives as young people, since we’ve seen these things. Why is this happening? Why aren’t we fixing this? When he won the Democratic nomination, Frost made it clear he was going to run.
Gun Violence in the U.S. After Monday’s Elementary School Shooting, a Case Study Revealed by A Nashville, Tennessee, Police Chief
But many Republicans, who now control the US House, have cited a mental health crisis in the US as the reason for America’s gun violence problem, showing little interest in the government trying to regulate access to guns.
Gun violence was found to be a more deadly factor for mental health challenges than the increased mental health challenges. Between 2019 and 2021, all of the increase in suicides and most of the increase in homicides was from gun-related incidences. The gun suicide rate increased 10% while the non-gun suicide rate decreased.
According to CNN, after the high-profile mass shootings such as the one at Marjory Martin Douglas High School in Florida, which occurred a few weeks before Gallup gauged its recent high of 67% support for stricter gun laws, support for stricter gun laws tends to spike.
Further gun safety legislation is out of the question until lawmakers on Capitol Hill reflect this majority.
Despite that action by the previous Congress, and due to the action by the Supreme Court, the basic thrust of that story from last year holds as the US grapples with the aftermath of Monday’s Nashville, Tennessee, elementary school shooting in which three 9-year-old children and three adults were killed.
In recent years, several gun stores in the city have been cited for selling firearms to the shooter in Nashville. Hale was under a doctor’s care for an emotional disorder, according to Metropolitan Nashville Police Department Chief John Drake who said that Hale’s parents knew the shooter bought a gun and sold it.
“Had it been reported that she was suicidal or that she was going to kill someone and had been made known to us, then we would have tried to get those weapons. But as it stands, we had absolutely no idea, actually, who this person was,” Drake told reporters.
Do We Really Need to Prevent Gun Violence? The Giffords Law Center for Preventing Gun Violence in Tennessee and the Second Amendment
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives Tennessee an “F” for its existing laws. The legislature there is currently considering legislation to expand which guns can be carried legally without a permit.
Republican leaders on Capitol Hill did not see a need to reexamine the assault weapons ban even after the shooting in Nashville.
“The Second Amendment is the Second Amendment,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee that has jurisdiction over gun policy. I believe in the Second amendment and do not want to punish law-abiding American citizens.
During Barack Obama’s Presidency, there was no Senate-confirmed director other than the one nominated by President Joe Biden.
Biden does what he can to crack down on ghost guns, but he lacks the power to do anything about guns used in mass shootings.
Former President Donald Trump’s administration tried to reinterpret an existing law against civilian ownership of machine guns to ban so-called “bump stocks” like the one used to kill 58 people in Las Vegas in 2017. The ban on bump stock was struck down by the federal appeals court, but it remained in place until the case returns to a lower court.
Only 20% of gun owners nationwide favored a law allowing concealed guns without a permit, despite the Supreme Court rejecting New York’s permit law.
A federal appeals court in January upheld a new Florida law that raised the minimum age to buy a gun to 21. It may not be possible for the decision to make it to the Supreme Court due to the fact that Republicans in Florida are now several years away from the shooting that inspired the change.
What this all means is that despite the cries that something – or anything – must be done, the US government is predisposed to inaction, the courts are very respectful of gun rights and the absolutists have a chokehold on the system. As long as there are more guns than people in the US, this cycle will continue.