LANSING, Mich. — Michigan's State Superintendent, Dr. Michael Rice, is calling on the state legislature to pass commonsense gun laws after a gunman killed three people and injured five more at Michigan State University Monday night.
“The state legislature needs to do what should’ve been done years ago—pass meaningful gun legislation,” Dr. Rice said at Tuesday’s State Board of Education meeting.
The deadly shooting at Michigan State comes less than two years since a 15-year-old shooter killed four students and injured six more as well as a teacher at Oxford High School, about 70 miles east of MSU.
During the meeting, Dr. Rice also mentioned a State Board of Education resolution adopted in October 2022 that urged lawmakers to pass safer gun laws and make Michigan's schools safer.
The resolution used findings from a statewide poll that shows several commonsense gun safety initiatives with which Michiganders agreed:
- Requiring background checks on all gun sales, including sales at gun shows and other private sales.
- Enacting a child access prevention law that would hold gun owners accountable for the safe storage of firearms.
- Preventing sales of all firearms to people who have been reported to law enforcement as dangerous to themselves or others.
- Requiring a waiting period of at least three days after a gun purchase before the gun can be taken home.
- Imposing criminal penalties or fines for those who buy firearms for another person.
- Requiring a person to be age 21 instead of 18 to be able to purchase an assault-style weapon.
- Establishing a court-issued protection order called an “extreme risk protection order.”
The poll, conducted by the research firm EPIC-MRA, shows that those initiatives had strong support from Republicans, Democrats, Independents, members of the NRA and concealed weapons license holders.
“We’ve lost too many young lives to gun violence,” Dr. Rice said. “There are guns in the wrong hands. It’s well past time for commonsense gun safety laws.”
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