LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The Michigan House Judiciary committee convened Wednesday afternoon to hear testimony and deliberate on more than five new pieces of gun legislation in the House that could affect roughly 40% of Michiganders who are legal gun owners. 

While the bills varied in affects, they could broadly be categorized under laws affecting Universal Background Checks, Safe Storage, Extreme Risk Protection Laws, and Concealed Carry laws. 

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The bills on the agenda are not the finalized product but a starting point according to House Judiciary Committee Chair and Representative Kelly Breen (D-Novi) promising to further address the legislation again next week at another committee hearing.  The committee heard testimonies from 15 speakers including former U.S. Representative Fred Upton (R-St. Joseph), medical professionals, gun violence prevention groups, and MSU students. 

The first speaker was Jonathan Gold, Michigan President of Gifford’s Gun Owners for Safety who spoke to his background in firearms safety. 

“No child deserves to die for being inquisitive,” Gould began his testimony, adding that he is also a “steadfast supporter of the second amendment” and firearms instructor in Michigan for the past 20 years. 

“None of these laws infringe upon my second amendment rights,” Gold said, “they don’t revoke my right to own and operate a firearm, nor do they prohibit what I can own or where I can carry.” 

Keegan Mays-Williams who represented the midwestern chapter legal counsel for Everytown- a gun violence prevention group, also testified. 

“56% of the gun deaths in Michigan are by firearms suicide,” Williams said, “That’s an average of 708 deaths per year, the rate of firearms suicide has increased in Michigan by 26% between 2012 and 2021 whereas gun homicides have increased 22% in the same period. To put this in simple terms, a gun suicide occurs every 11 hours in Michigan. 

HB 4144, secure storage laws, requires that guns are stored in a manner that ensures they cannot be accessed by children or other unauthorized persons, and you can can make sure they are not accessed because of a trigger device such as a trigger lock or a locked container when they are not being carried or used by a person in their possession according to Williams. 

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Senior counsel and racial justice at the Brady Campaign, Kelly Sampson, discussed predominantly the Extreme Risk Protection Laws (ERPO). 

“Contrary to popular belief, gun suicide is preventable,” Sampson said, because ERPO laws are one of the most effective ways to reduce suicide. 

She also acknowledged that many people suffer tough times, though those tough times do not need to lead to gun violence or suicide.  Another way to help with this was through safe storage laws. 

“Modern storage devices uphold the self-defense method that the Supreme Court has upheld in two key ways,” Sampson said, “First, today’s gun safes and trigger locks allow gun owners to retrieve and operate their weapons within seconds.  In this way, safe storage does not hinder the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.  Second, safe storage devices keep people who should not have access to firearms – like children – from intentionally or unintentionally harming themselves or others.” 

One of the few questions from committee came from Representative Pat Outman (R-Six Lakes) who asked regarding the universal background check if Sampson was aware of the  – 2021 FBI statistics detailing that Rifles and Shotguns account for 3% and 1% of violent crimes, and knives and other cutting instruments account for 6% of all crimes. 

“There is not going to be one gun law that is going to solve every single kind of gun crime,” Samson said, “Our gun laws right now are kind of like cottage cheese, and so to your point, this gun law is part of a comprehensive system that will deal with the 1% of  gun crimes that are caused by long guns in addition to all the other laws we are talking about here.” 

The Chief Medical Executive for the State of Michigan, Natasha Bagdasarian, MD, also testified at the committee meeting speaking to gun violence as a public health concern. 

“We need to have a public health approach to gun violence,” Bagdasarian said, which would include a multimodal risk reduction strategy that includes legislative policies. 

Two students from Michigan State University also delivered remarks about their experience during the shooting from Feb. 13, and the legacy of one of the three students killed in the school shooting.  President of the MSU Interfraternity Council, Sawyer McClure read aloud a story of Will White’s first meeting with Brian Fraser, leading up to their time together in the Phi Delta Theta fraternity on campus.

Vice President for Internal Administration, Carl Austin Miller Grondin, a senior at MSU also gave an account of his experience in which he continued calling friends and family to make sure they were safe.   He described the MSU students’ experience as having their pain as a spectacle for all of the nation. 

Representative Emily Dievendorf (D-Lansing) shared her apologies for having the students present when so many folks owe them an apology for a delay in action. 

“We are done sacrificing your lives for us to learn how important this is,” Dievendorf said. “We will give you a reason to stop protesting at the capitol, because we know that we as a government body are the ones that gave you a reason to be there in the first place, and we as a society, and we will do the work.”

While there were more than a dozen speakers who testified, none of them spoke against any of the proposed gun legislation; however, there will be a second hearing next week according to Rep. Breen.