Just another day in the U.S. of A?  Do we feel any sense of surprise when reading this list of article titles?  Do we feel shocked to learn these events happened around the country on the same weekend?  Probably not.

I will not claim to know if current legislative proposals might have prevented any shootings on this list.  Indeed, I have not even read the details of any of these shootings.  I am too disheartened to analyze another set of tragedies.  At this moment anyway.

At the Michigan Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, we often say that mass shootings should draw our attention but not capture our attention. There are many other facets of gun violence, such as suicide, that also require attention and that produce far larger numbers of deaths and injuries.  For many of these problems, existing evidence supports specific laws and programs that can reduce risk and harm—all while respecting the legal requirements of the Second Amendment.  If we look at certain states, we can see the beneficial effects of taking a harder look at who can legally possess firearms, what firearms are available to the general public, and how requirements for safe storage of firearms can reduce accidental deaths and injuries. In Michigan, for example, we have opportunities to improve policies for removing firearms from people subject to protection orders and others who are in the middle of personal crises.  We could make greater efforts to deter careless storage practices that produce tragedies such as Friday’s shooting in Florida in which a three-year-old found a firearm foolishly placed under a couch cushion and used it to shoot his two-year-old sister (Bourne and Krietz, 2021).  Obviously, we have seen such tragic shootings in Michigan involving young children as well as teens (Laitner, 2021; Palmer, 2021).

Unfortunately, legislative proposals in Michigan concerning these and other gun violence prevention issues typically do not receive needed consideration in committee hearings.  Those with the authority to schedule hearings at which proposed gun safety legislation could be discussed appear unwilling to even permit such discussions to take place.  In Congress, gun safety proposals concerning improved background checks have been approved by the House of Representatives.  Thus far, however, the deeply divided Senate will not move them forward to a vote.  There are additional proposals in the House focused on other aspects of gun violence.  But if the Senate will not act on background check proposals that are supported by more than eighty percent of the American public (Pew Research Center, 2021), some House members may feel that their time would be better spent on other policy issues that have better prospects for being enacted into law.