Children look on as lawmakers spar over gun storage legislation
LANSING, Mich. — As Michigan parents hold their children tighter, just hours after 19 students and two teachers were killed in a Uvalde, Texas elementary school, the question on so many minds is 'what's next?'
Among the lustrous, vaulted halls of Michigan's Capitol building, that question crosses the minds of both parents and lawmakers.
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For the hundreds of children roaming the Capitol Wednesday, it was another day of field trips. It was also another day after a mass shooting in an American school. This time, nearly two dozen third and fourth graders had their lives viciously cut short.
Michigan third grader Harper happily walked through her state Capitol with the rest of her class Wednesday.
“I like looking around at all this cool stuff," she said. "I also like seeing the chandeliers.”
Wednesday marked Harper's first time seeing the inside of where Michigan's laws are made.
“I like all the people here because they’re nice,” she said.
On one floor, Harper and her mom Elizabeth look down at the lawmakers who will shape so many parts of their lives. On the other floor, lawmakers decided Wednesday, once again, to push off legislation to address gun safety.
“We’re not thinking about these kids who are going to make our future. We need to protect them," said Elizabeth, who asked we not use her last name.
"What are we gonna do? I don’t get paid to figure that out, but somebody does and they need to do it.”
An attempt to bring legislation forward to a vote that would put in place safe gun storage rules was shut down by Senate Republicans Wednesday morning. The bills were all introduced last summer but have received renewed attention in the wake of the shooting at Oxford High School in November 2021, when four teens were murdered by a 15-year-old classmate who prosecutors say was given access to a gun bought by his parents as his early Christmas present.
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That effort was lead in part by Sen. Ken Horn, who later took Harper and her class onto the Senate floor as part of their tour.
Just two and a half hours earlier, Horn told his fellow lawmakers not to make legislative decisions in the heat of tragedy.
“They don’t give a flying frog what we do here in this Senate," Horn, R-Frankenmuth, said about the families of Uvalde's victims.
"They’re not paying attention to us. It’s way too early to assign bill numbers to their grief.”
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On Wednesday afternoon, House Democrats attempted to tie bar bills that would put in place basic gun safety measures - safe storage requirements and universal background checks - to existing bills. The effort was shot down without a formal vote or discussion.
Although Elizabeth has tried to protect her daughter from gun violence, she, Harper, and her other daughter found themselves running for cover in a Flint mall last year, when two people were shot.
“I was dancing in the mirror and then I just heard some noise and then I heard my mom say ‘Get down,’” Harper recalls.
“When you are in it, fear flashes before your eyes. Your life does,” Elizabeth said.
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Since that shooting, and since the shooting in Oxford, not one bill confronting gun violence has received a single vote in Lansing.
“Everyday we don’t take action, we are choosing guns over children,” Sen. Rosemary Bayer, D-Beverly Hills, told her colleagues on the Senate Floor Wednesday.
“No more thoughts and prayers. Policy changes need to happen," said Elizabeth.
"Today. Today.”
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