By Zachary Gorchow
President of Michigan Operations
Posted: February 15, 2023 1:06 PM

The mass shooting at Michigan State University this week struck at the heart of the MSU campus, the Lansing region and the state of Michigan itself.

The heart of campus because among the 50,000 current students and half-million living MSU alumni (this reporter among them), everyone spent some time in the MSU Union (where the second attack occurred) and a large percentage (again, this reporter included) had classes in Berkey Hall, where the first attack occurred. That walk to Berkey twice a week from South Case Hall in the winter (about 17 minutes if I really hustled) is seared into my memory from 1994-95.

The heart of the region because MSU is the beating heart of the Lansing area. It's a huge employer, economic driver, fuels people residing in the area and, even more than Lansing serving as the state capital, is what people think of first when they hear Lansing or East Lansing.

The heart of the state, or perhaps one of them, because I doubt there is a single resident of Michigan who has more than three degrees of separation from someone who attends or works for MSU. And for everyone in the Lansing region, there are no degrees of separation.

Three students dead, five critically injured, eight families shattered, tens of thousands traumatized.

This is a gut punch.

But while of course shocking, it also is not shocking. Gun violence and mass shootings, particularly at educational institutions, are all too common in the United States. Michigan just got lucky for so long in avoiding them until the mass shooting at Oxford High School in late 2021.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Legislature now face more urgency on what changes in law, if any, should be made.

The new Democratic-controlled Legislature, until Monday, seemed to have shunted firearms legislation to the backburner. In the month since officially taking majority in the House and Senate, lawmakers have gotten completely tangled up on their tax priorities that have not yet been sent to Ms. Whitmer.

Exactly zero bills have been introduced so far by Democratic lawmakers regarding firearms (editor's note: about 25 hours after this column posted, Senate Democrats introduced several firearm regulation bills). In fact, the only bill so far that contains a new firearm restriction is sponsored by a Republican, Sen. John Damoose of Harbor Springs, addressing a loophole in charging someone for bringing a firearm into an airport.

Now the focus is on three areas from Democrats: a red flag law allowing a judge to order a person's firearms seized if shown to be a danger to themselves or others (which possibly might have made a difference in Monday's attack) as well as mandatory background checks for all sales and a safe storage law (it's unclear if either would have helped based on the limited facts known about the shooter).

Democrats at some point will have to reckon with other firearms statutes they have lamented for years but could do nothing about so long as Republicans, who have long opposed new gun regulations, continued to oppose changes.

State law prohibits local governments from suing gun manufacturers, something now-Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan wanted to do more than 20 years ago as the Wayne County prosecutor but couldn't. There's the statute prohibiting local governments from regulating firearms, reserving that power to the state. What about codifying the 2018 Michigan Supreme Court ruling barring the open carry of firearms in schools, which otherwise are gun-free zones? Surely there is more.

Democratic lawmakers also will have to reckon with the move by some Democratic county prosecutors to ease up on the charging of nonviolent gun offenses and whether to remove some of that discretion.

The shooter was charged in 2019 for carrying a concealed pistol without a license, which is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. He eventually pleaded guilty to a high-level misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to probation. This meant he was still eligible to legally purchase a firearm. The felony would have prevented that.

Now, two things.

Former Ingham County Prosecutor Carol Siemon, a Democrat who was leading the county prosecutor's office at the time, was notorious for astonishingly soft charging, even on violent criminals. Her declaration in 2020 that she does not believe in life without parole sentences, even in the case of a man on parole for domestic assault who was accused of bludgeoning two women to death with plans to kill two others, brought a torrent of criticism. The judge on the case rejected her offer of a 30- to 50-year sentence for the man for second-degree murder (he eventually pleaded guilty but mentally ill and was sentenced to 70 to 100 years, the Lansing State Journal reported).

So the MSU shooter getting off with a misdemeanor and probation has gotten a lot of attention given Ms. Siemon's history.

However, the notion of someone with no known prior convictions (as appears to be the case with the MSU shooter) getting a felony conviction and prison time for a nonviolent gun charge seems unlikely, regardless of the county or the prosecutor. How, if at all, the Legislature addresses this question will be closely watched.

Republicans have led the criticism of Democratic prosecutors' charging habits in the wake of the MSU shooting, but they also have some questions to answer.

In the last three terms, Republicans have introduced bills to end the requirement that someone wishing to carry a concealed firearm obtain a license to do so. Legislation passed the House in 2017 but died in the Senate. It moved from a House committee to the House floor in the 2019-20 term but died there. And in the 2021-22 term, legislation was introduced (now-Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt of Porter Township introduced one of the bills in the package), but it never left committee. Supporters have dubbed the legislation "constitutional carry," contending under the Second Amendment persons should have the right to carry a concealed pistol without having to go through the training and licensing required under Michigan law for more than 20 years.

Had these bills been law in 2019, when the MSU shooter was charged with carrying a concealed pistol without a license, he wouldn't have been charged at all because he would not have broken the law. So Republicans will have to reckon with that if they want to attack Democratic prosecutors for undercharging a gun offense.

How does the legislation produced by a school safety task force at the end of the previous term and reintroduced this week factor into any upcoming action is another question.

All this is happening after a week of partisan procedural battling and recriminations on the tax issues at the Legislature that exactly zero people outside of the two-block radius around the Capitol will want to see on whatever legislation results from the MSU and Oxford High School shootings.

I'm currently watching two students jogging west on East Michigan Avenue toward the Capitol for a sit-in to back gun legislation, carrying signs. I seriously doubt they want to hear about a bunch of partisan posturing in the wake of what happened Monday.