gun control

Governor Snyder released a plan yesterday to improve safety in Michigan schools following the Parkland, Florida school shooting.

His $20 million plan calls for boosting security at hundreds of schools, setting up a task force to come up with more ways to improve school security between now and the end of the year, more training for school administrators and school resource officers, and expanding the OK2SAY tip line.

The governor says he intentionally stayed away from guns.

Larry Nassar's former boss Dr. William Strampel has been charged with a felony and three misdemeanors. Strampel denies the charges. Michigan Radio's Rebecca Kruth and senior news analyst Jack Lessenberry discuss new developments in the Michigan State University sex abuse case.

Thousands of students in Michigan walked out of their classrooms last week to protest gun violence. They don’t want guns in schools, and they especially want assault rifles banned.

Personally, I would probably go even farther. I don’t think anyone should be allowed to own an assault rifle, except if it were kept under lock and key at a shooting range.

But the tragedy of the student protests is this:

Nobody wants to say this, but they aren’t going to go anywhere. The lobbyists of the NRA can count votes. They are mostly silent now, except for the stupidest among them.

All across the country, students and some teachers stood up at 10 a.m., walked out of their classrooms, and spent the next 17 minutes honoring the 17 people killed in the Parkland, Florida high school shooting.

Many schools in Michigan took part in this national school walkout, demanding action from lawmakers on school safety and guns.

The Trump administration has rolled out its plan to respond to violence and guns in our schools. It wants to provide firearms training to some teachers. But it has backed off on making major changes to gun legislation: For example, there’s nothing about raising the minimum age to buy guns from 18 to 21.

Following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, where 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz has admitted killing 17 people, President Trump said he was in favor of raising the minimum age but backed off after meeting with the National Rifle Association.

When a young person commits a crime, one common response is to blame video games, especially violent video games, for the criminal act.

The recent mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was no exception. On Thursday, President Trump will convene a meeting with video game industry leaders at the White House. The meeting will focus on whether violent video games contribute to real-world violence in our country.

Gun laws across the country are under the microscope at state capitols. And Michigan is no exception. But the reality is, we’re not seeing a re-thinking of gun policy. Instead, everyone’s just returned to their corners.

There’s increasing pressure for Lansing to do something following the school shootings in Parkland, Florida.

State lawmakers might soon consider bills that would let courts temporarily take guns away from gun owners they considered to be dangerous to other people or themselves.

After 17 students were killed in a Florida school last week, some high school students in Kalamazoo decided they needed to do something.

Under the banner of “Students Fighting Guns Since Adults Won’t,” eight students drafted a petition and put it up on Change.org, a popular petition website.

It’s been five days since the Valentine’s Day school shooting in Florida; the 17 dead are being buried, and the story is easing out of the headlines.

This weekend, writing a newspaper column, I started to refer to this as “our nation’s latest school shooting,” and caught myself. Better not say that, I realized.

Someday, a shooter will walk into a school, probably a suburban school, somewhere in Michigan, and blow teachers and students away, most likely with a weapon no civilian should be allowed to own. When that happens, don’t give me any credit for prophecy.

This week, Enbridge Energy reported the protective coating has worn off of it's Line 5 pipeline in more spots than previously revealed. Line 5 is the oil and gas pipeline that runs under the straits of Mackinac. The new report says there were 8 spots of bare metal and seven of them will be repaired before winter sets in. A state commission has called Enbridge to testify next month.

Michigan Radio's Morning Edition host Doug Tribou and senior news analyst Jack Lessenberry talk about possible solutions.

I’m not big on ideology. I’ve known communists and Ayn Randers, and both live in closed systems that are substitutes for really having to think.

The communists are pretty much limited to a few websites these days, and I don’t get the sense that middle-class teenage boys still read The Fountainhead as often as they did.

This Las Vegas massacre has revived the outcry against the presence of certain guns in this country. These calls for tightening gun laws, or banning the bump stock that converts a rifle into an automatic weapon, are focused on Congress.

But there won't be much of an outcry in Lansing, beyond a few tweets.

That's because the gun control side lost Michigan more than 16 years ago, according to Zach Gorchow, editor of Gongwer News Service.

Whatever else you can say about us, this much is clear. No other so-called advanced, or civilized, or industrial nation has anything like the deaths from firearms we do.

Yes, there will be murders committed with guns in Japan this year. Based on recent statistics, there will probably be 12 or 13 of them. Japan has about 127 million people.

Michigan has less than 10 million, so if our culture was anything like Japan’s you might expect we’d have perhaps one murder committed with a firearm this year.