WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., introduced legislation Wednesday aimed at curbing gun violence a month and a half after a mass shooting at Michigan State University left three students dead and five injured.
One bill would bar the transfer of a gun for three years to someone who has been convicted of a misdemeanor if they used, carried or possessed a gun during the crime, according to Slotkin's office. Another bill would require a one-week waiting period before a buyer can receive a gun.
A third bill, reintroduced with Democratic U.S. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, would appropriate $250 million for gun violence prevention research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the next five years.
Slotkin unveiled the bills Wednesday afternoon on Capitol Hill alongside MSU shooting survivor Devin Woodruff and Dylan Morris, who survived the mass shooting at Oxford High School in November 2021 in which four students were killed and seven people injured.
The introduction of the legislation comes two days after six people, including three children, were killed in a shooting at an elementary school in Nashville. There have been 130 mass shootings in the United States since the beginning of 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
"As gun violence continues to be the leading cause of death among American children, we as a society have to make the decision to step up and protect kids like Dylan and Devin," Slotkin said in a statement. "We can't allow an entire generation of young Americans to be defined by gun violence, and these bills are a step to help us begin to address this epidemic."
She said the three bills being introduced Wednesday will "work concurrently, covering all corners of the issue so that we can achieve our most fundamental of our responsibilities as elected officials: keeping our communities — and children — safe."
Slotkin is running for the Democratic nomination in 2024 to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich..
Dylan Morris and Devin Woodruff, students at Oxford High School and MSU, respectively, came to Washington to speak in support of the bills Wednesday.
Woodruff said he was at the student union on the MSU campus last month when the shooting started. Now, "we don't know how to feel safe on campus," he said.
Morris, now a senior at Oxford, said he was in English class when the shooting started at his school in 2021. He and his classmates armed themselves with whatever they could find, from scissors to a hockey stick. "Is this America's idea of freedom?" he asked. "It's not mine."
They said turning to advocacy has been a part of how they're working to heal from the trauma. "As young people, we have a story to tell," Woodruff said. "We have something very unique — my parents say they didn't have to worry about gun violence like we do now. So advocating to these Congressional representatives is important."
The bills face an uphill battle in the U.S. House, where a slim Republican majority has indicated little interest in passing gun control legislation sought by Democrats. In the Senate, where Democrats hold a slim 51-49 majority, Republicans have express similar sentiments.
President Joe Biden has urged Congress to ban assault weapons and expand background checks for gun sales.
"I would say we've gone about as far as we can go unless somebody identifies some area that we didn't address," said Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas of background checks this week in the wake of the Nashville shooting.
That kind of response is frustrating to advocates like Morris and Woodruff, they said, who hope legislation like Slotkin's can become a bipartisan cause.
"It makes us feel like we aren't being listened to," Morris said. "We would really appreciate for the legislators in that building to take us seriously, because we will be coming for their jobs in the future."
Last year, Congress passed a law following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that expanded background checks for gun buyers under 21, funded mental health services and created incentives for the passage of state red-flag laws that create a process for taking firearms away from people deemed a danger to themselves and others.
Federal law already bars people with felony convictions from buying or possessing guns in most cases, as are people with domestic violence misdemeanor convictions or related court orders. The bill to put a three-year moratorium on gun purchases by people convicted of gun-related misdemeanors is dubbed the No Crime Left Behind Act.
Anthony McRae, the 43-year-old Lansing resident who police said attacked the MSU campus last month, had a history of mental health issues and was charged with multiple gun-related crimes in 2019. He was charged with a felony of carrying a concealed pistol without a concealed carry permit that June and was charged with a misdemeanor crime of possessing a loaded firearm in a vehicle that October. He pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor, and prosecutors dismissed the felony charge.
The bill requiring a weeklong waiting period is titled the Pause for Gun Safety Act and is informed in part by a Harvard Business School study that found states with waiting periods, regardless of the length of time, had 17% fewer murders and 10% fewer suicides on average, according to Slotkin's office. A violation of the proposed policy would carry a $250,000 fine and a prison sentence of up to five years.
A 15-year-old student at Oxford High School used a semi-automatic weapon bought by his father four days earlier.
Slotkin has made gun violence prevention a central plank of her early campaign to succeed Stabenow. She said many voters reached a "tipping point" after two mass school shootings in the state as well as the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde that killed 20 last May.
Slotkin has rallied at the Michigan Capitol with state Democratic lawmakers who have approved bills along party lines that were sent to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The bills would require criminal background checks for all firearm purchases and set new storage standards for guns in homes. Another measure to allow "extreme risk" protection orders, also known as a red flag law, is advancing in the Legislature. Republican critics have questioned whether the proposal has enough due process protections built in for individuals targeted under such a law.
Republican lawmakers opposed the measures, arguing they wouldn't prevent shootings but would violate constitutionally guaranteed rights.
"If gun control was definitively effective, cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Baltimore would experience very little gun violence," said Sen. Michelle Hoitenga, R-Manton. "We keep hearing America has the gun problem.
"What America does have is an affliction that is common to most nations: a culture of violence and a mental health crisis."
A statewide poll earlier this month by the Glengariff Group published by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV (Channel 4) found widespread support for new restrictions on the sale and storage of weapons, background checks, limits on magazine capacity and a 14-day waiting period for buying firearms.
Slotkin is the only U.S. House member to represent two communities torn apart by the trauma of mass school shootings.
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