In the wake of the Jan. 6 attempts on our Nation’s capitol, as well as numerous state Capitol buildings across the country, lawmakers are moving quickly to figure out ways to minimize the chances for serious violence surrounding our every polarized political discourse. The Detroit Free Press reports that the Michigan Capitol Commission voted unanimously on “Monday to ban the open carry of guns inside the Michigan Capitol, effective immediately.”
This ban does not include concealed carry of guns inside of the Capitol, nor does it ban open carry of firearms on the Capitol grounds outside of the building—something many people wanted to be included in such a ban. This move comes after months of growing tensions and rhetoric between anti-masker COVID-19 faketriots, and very real physical threats to elected officials like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
According to MLive, this move comes after months of debate surrounding security measures for the Capitol. The commission went to work on these security ideas after armed yahoos stormed the Capitol building back in April. Chaired by Gary Randall and Vice Chaired by John Truscott, they decided that while they do not have the ability to fund metal detectors at more of the entrances of the building, they could at the very least ban open carry inside of the building. Commissioner Bill Kandler told reports that “Commissioner Truscott and I spent a lot of time figuring out how security works and how we could implement things, how security works at other buildings such as the Supreme Court. After we reviewed all the implementation aspects, we determined the extreme limit of our real authority to actually implement was to implement a ban on open carry. We don’t have the infrastructure to do much else at this time.”
Of course, while this move means that for the immediate future Michigan State Police will enforce this new law, there are Republicans who believe the commission has overstepped its powers. Specifically, Republican Speaker of the House-elect Rep. Jason Wentworth released a statement saying that there was no legal authority for them to make this rule. Wentworth’s spokesperson told news outlets that the speaker would be thinking about the next steps Republicans might take to thwart this ban on guns.
Wentworth acting like an insider fascist is no surprise, having already done more than his fair share to undermine our elections, and to weaken the checks and balances his own state has for maintaining election integrity. It seems that Wentworth is a lot more interested in becoming a productive legislator when arming people to storm the Capitol than he is about securing our seats of democracy.