Don’t let anyone fool you. Michigan was always going to try and pass gun control this legislative term. That was on the table the moment they realized they had a majority.
The shooting at Michigan State University has only served as a pretext for doing just that.
All the same, though, it seems that the state Senate is poised to pass a slew of anti-gun legislation.
The Michigan Senate is expected to vote soon on a package of bills that would change gun laws.
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If passed, background checks would be required to purchase all firearms, not just handguns. Gun owners would also be required to store firearms locked up away from children.
Red flag laws are also part of the package. Other states have enacted these laws. Florida passed a law after the Parkland high school shooting in 2018, while Maine has a “yellow flag” law that requires a medical professional to sign off before guns are removed.
It should be noted, however, that there’s not really any evidence that any of these would have stopped the shooting at Michigan State.
Not that such things have ever mattered to anti-gunners. For all their pontification on how change needs to follow such shootings, they never seem that interested in actually crafting laws that are remotely relevant to what actually happened.
Instead, we get this grab-bag nonsense, tons of things they wanted all along and couldn’t get, but now they can so they’re not interested in letting a good crisis go to waste.
But here’s what Michigan Democrats are missing. They’re forgetting that gun rights supporters in the state have long memories. They forget that there will be other elections, and just because they took office now doesn’t mean they’ll get to stay there.
They pass this and it will be a rallying cry throughout the state.
Sure, Democrats took control of the legislature for the first time in years, but it’s unlikely they did so in order to enact this kind of blatantly unconstitutional nonsense.
Then, of course, we have the inevitable legal challenges questioning that very constitutionality. Even if the voters are supportive–and I’m not at all convinced that’s really the case–the courts are very likely to have a different opinion, especially following the Bruen decision.
Permits to purchase a gun? They might as well require a permit to get a Twitter account. Especially coupled with universal background checks, which translate into a de facto kind of gun registration. Nope, nothing about that passes the post-Bruen sniff test.
As a result, the Senate can vote on this. The legislature can pass it and Gov. Whitmer can sign it. None of that means jack if the law cannot stand before the Supreme Court and survive.
Frankly, I don’t see how this nonsense could.
Michigan may be trying to turn anti-gun, but they’re going way too hard, way too fast and they’re going to be disappointed where everything eventually ends up.
Life’s hard, wear a helmet and stop trying to infringe on people’s rights just because you think you can and your life in public office will be much happier.