Gun Safety

Here in northern Metro Detroit, we are very proud to be from the safest communities in Michigan – and rightfully so. Yet as peaceful as our community may be, none of us are immune to news headlines of mass shootings and other instances of senseless gun violence that plague our nation. Theaters. Schools. Churches. Bars. Concerts. It seems every other month a new venue is struck from the list of “safe spaces” – spaces where Americans can go and not worry about whether they will be safe. From Oxford High School to Michigan State University, gun violence is not a distant headline — it is a lived reality for far too many Michigan families.

As someone who grew up in the era of mass shooting drills at school, I can tell you personally how traumatizing it is to watch fellow students fleeing their school buildings on television. Children should be spending their time learning their ABCs, and not how to “hide, quiet, freeze.” Our state and country are woefully ill-equipped to fix our current reality, but there are several steps we can take right now to at least fix the things within our control. 

So here’s my plan:

Expanding and Strengthening Background Checks

Thanks to legislation passed in Lansing in 2023, Michigan has now expanded background checks to cover all firearms. The next step is ensuring these laws actually work as intended.

• Enforcement + system integration

• Dealer compliance audits

• Closing private-sale enforcement gaps

• Fund Michigan State Police to enforce universal background check compliance

• Require real-time reporting into NICS-compatible systems

• Increase penalties for straw purchasing and trafficking

• Amend accidental typos in current Michigan law to require criminal background checks on all firearms, not just “handguns.”

• Remove unsafe background check exemptions for loaned firearms, as are currently granted in Michigan law.

Guaranteeing Community Safety

• Protect our students by ensuring that the only firearms allowed on school campuses are those which are maintained by sanctioned law enforcement and security personnel.

• Demilitarize civilian Michiganders. There is no reason the weapons our troops use in battle are needed on the streets of Rochester. I will work to enact state law to outright prohibit the transfer or possession of assault weapons, 50 caliber rifles, or large capacity ammunition magazines.

• Prevent crises before they occur by enacting extreme risk detection laws, sometimes called “red flag laws.” These proposed laws, which are supported by Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, allow concerned family members and local law enforcement officials to ask a court for an extreme risk protection order to, while ensuring due process, temporarily suspend access to guns by a person who poses a serious threat to themselves or others.

• Reexamine the utility and effectiveness of Michigan’s Stand Your Ground law. A 2018 study concluded that these laws actually increase homicides instances, particularly where firearms are involved. Any law that results in more Michigander deaths is not a good law.

Closing Loopholes and Ensuring Safe Ownership

• End the gun-involved domestic abuse crisis against women. The vast majority of women killed with guns in the United States are killed by intimate partners or family members and the presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation makes it five times more likely that a woman will be killed. To end this tragic pattern, I will: 

• • Support state law prohibiting people in any relationship, not just spouses, who have been convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors from having any firearms – not only handguns.

  • Support state law requiring abusers convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors to turn in their firearms when they become prohibited from having them.

  • Support state law prohibiting all people under final domestic violence restraining orders from having firearms.

  • Support state law prohibiting all people under temporary domestic violence restraining orders from having firearms.

  • Support state law prohibiting all convicted stalkers in the state of Michigan from having firearms.

  • Support state law requiring law enforcement to remove firearms from the scene of a domestic violence incident.

• Ensure child safety at home by enacting safe storage laws, requiring firearm owners to lock their weapons in appropriate cases when not in use.

• Make Michigan make sense with one minimum age. Since different gun laws in Michigan yield different minimum ages (18 vs. 21) for firearm purchase, all minimum ages should be set at 21 years old.