Today Michigan State University paused all classes and other activities to grieve for the people who died on the school’s East Lansing campus a year ago on today’s date. The shooter needed help. I don’t know if he ever asked for help, but obviously, he didn’t get any help. At least not any meaningful help that would’ve talked him out of shooting up random people.
Republicans at the federal level sent thoughts and prayers. Republicans at the state level also sent thoughts and prayers. But, thanks to new fair maps that had recently gone into effect, Democrats had gotten a majority in the state legislature. And that meant that Democrats could do something a little more meaningful than thoughts and prayers.
They passed laws requiring the safe storage of guns, more thorough background checks for potential gun buyers, more restrictions on gun ownership for domestic abusers, enabling extreme risk protection orders (so-called “red flags”). That kind of thing.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-Michigan) signed what the legislature sent. Those laws go into effect today. Sadly, there are many other tragic anniversaries that could have been chosen for these laws’ effective date.
And of course so-called “supporters” of the Second Amendment are already vowing to challenge these commonsense gun regulations. The Second Amendment was meant to ensure that individual states could have their own armies. But now it has been perverted to mean that any dumb man can have any high-powered weapon for any purpose whatsoever, without any obligation or responsibility to the particular free state he lives in.
The Second Amendment is of course federal law. That means that whatever the Michigan Legislature does is constrained by the Supreme Court’s perverted interpretation of the Second Amendment. So is Detroit’s City Council.
Every week I read Councilwoman Gabriela Santiago-Romero’s newsletter. She’s technically a Democrat, but not more and better Democrats like we want. She’s very good at pandering to groups of people. Not very good at actually accomplishing anything for those people. Each week there’s something galling or disappointing in her newsletter. So many missed opportunities, things the city could do with its own resources without having to beg foundations and the federal government for crumbs.
This time, though, the disappointing thing really is actually beyond the council’s ability to fix. Detroit is a fairly safe city, despite what they say on Fox News. But there has been a lot of violence in Greektown, which, by the way, is where Greektown Casino is located in.
So City Council decided to do something about it: the Detroit Police Department would set up a checkpoint in Greektown. Makes sense, doesn’t it? I think so.
In today’s newsletter from the councilwoman, after some rather mundane tidbits, there was this: the City Council’s internal operations committee has referred the following to the whole council:
A $30,000 contract with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP to provide advice to the city in connection with evaluating the constitutionality of a checkpoint to curb gun violence in the Greektown area.
Talk is cheap and advice is free, unless it’s lawyers doing the talking and advising.
Doesn’t the city already have a bunch of lawyers? Yeah. But since this involves the holy Second Amendment and related laws and case precedent, the whole thing is so thorny and complicated that the city apparently needs outside expertise on this matter.
That’s where we’re at. Pretty much everything in the Bill of Rights is subject to caveats, and the first clause of the Second Amendment is just meaningless filler, but the second clause of the Second Amendment is sacred and inviolable. No matter what nonsense that leads to.