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Mourning on the Red Cedar River

Three college students are left dead. Five injured. The rest of the
state is wracked in grief.

A shooting at Michigan State University, my alma mater, is the last
thing I expected my first contribution to BASED to be about. In fact, I
already had something planned to write on Michigan politics. I will
likely revisit that story in the future. Either way, I felt it would be
remiss of me to not give my condolences to the three young people who
had their lives taken away too early, the five who sustained life
threatening injuries, and the rest of the campus community who will
forever be burned by Monday's tragedy.

In January 2017, I arrived on Michigan State University's 5,200 acre
campus, and it quickly became a home away from home. For those outside
the Great Lakes State, MSU is often overshadowed by its counterpart, the
University of Michigan, or MSU's reputation is sullied by association
with the sexual predator and former doctor Larry Nassar and the
university administration's role in enabling his crimes.  

But for ordinary Michiganders, MSU is a melting pot in the truest sense
of the phrase's meaning. It is home to more than 50,000 students, and
countless alumni across the globe. "Perhaps more than any other school
in the state," Jordan Acker, a regent for the University of Michigan
said on Twitter
<[link removed]>,
"[MSU] has tons of students from every county. This is a statewide
tragedy." The closest comparison I can think of is the outsized impact
the CUNY system has for the residents of New York City. Michigan State
and other Big Ten schools play that role for tons of young people across
the Midwest, a clear upward ladder for socioeconomic mobility.

One of the injured students exemplifies this. Guadalupe Huapilla-Pérez,
a junior at Michigan State University, is enrolled in one of the
university's most valuable programs, the MSU College Assistance
Migrant Program (CAMP). This is specifically geared toward putting the
children of migrant farm workers into colleges and universities.
Huapilla-Pérez's older sister arranged a GoFundMe goal of $50,000 for
the family. At time of writing, they have raised more than $374,000
<[link removed]>.
My first year at Michigan State, I lived in Holden Hall, where MSU CAMP
services were located and where all CAMP participants lived. The first
friends I made at Michigan State were some of these students. It's a
very tight-knit community.

As an alum, I am heartbroken. I nearly puked while watching the national
press list the locations where victims were transported from-my old
stomping grounds, places where I had some of my best early adulthood
memories. Classes are supposed to resume on Monday, and I have no idea
how anyone comes back after that. One early report revealed
<[link removed]>
that one of the survivors at Michigan State, his brother, survived a
gunshot wound in November 2021 in a previous school shooting.

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When discourse around gun control enters popular conversation, usually
after a mass tragedy of this type, I typically stay quiet-not because
I'm some sort of closeted gun-loving nutjob, but because the extremity
of the mass shooting eclipses how gun violence is a modern feature of
everyday life in the United States. The AR-15 has come to symbolize the
most dastardly of all weapons-and don't get me wrong, I am not
downplaying its life-ending capabilities.

However, the majority of gun violence
<[link removed]>
happens with a handgun, which is exactly what the Michigan State
University shooter used (two of them to be exact). Even though mass
shootings get overwhelming media attention, the most common form of gun
violence is suicide. The MSU shooter, as it happened, was both a mass
shooter and died of a self-inflicted gunshot. According to Pew
<[link removed]>,
in 2020, 54 percent of all firearm-related deaths in the United
States-24,292 of them-were suicides. By comparison, 38 to 513 gun
deaths were from a mass shooting, depending on how one defines them.

The reality of deaths from gun violence in the United States is a
thousand times worse than the instances that grab the most media
attention. And aside from deaths, there are the countless people who are
survivors of gun violence, and their friends and loved ones who must
move forward one way or another. We're a deeply sick country.

It does seem that state Democrats will attempt to pass some modest gun
safety reforms. Following the mass shooting at Oxford High School
(located in Michigan) in November 2021, Michigan Democrats have rallied
around three main gun law reforms. Those include red flag laws, safe
storage laws, and universal background checks. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
included the trio as a priority
<[link removed]>
under the state's newly acquired Democratic trifecta. Still, Michigan
Republicans are still trying to block even these measures by reframing
the debate
<[link removed]>
as being solely about mental illness.  

It's a sleight of hand operation. Of course, everyone wants more
mental health services. But even if it were the case that every
perpetrator of gun violence were mentally ill, it would still be a
problem that such people can get access to lethal weapons so easily.
Witness the numerous mass shootings where law enforcement officials had
warnings prior to their crimes-the system we have governing firearms
clearly does not work.  

Now, Democrats in Michigan have the opportunity to prove that "Spartan
Strong," "Uvalde Strong," "Oxford Strong," or
"insert-whatever-next-tragedy-happens Strong" isn't just a whitewashed
"thoughts and prayers."

On Wednesday, more than a hundred Michigan State University students sat
outside the Capitol in Lansing. Their demands are pretty simple for the
Democratic trifecta. Paige Lawson, a sophomore at Michigan State, told
the Detroit News
<[link removed]>,
"No more people need to die. We just need to have more gun reform and
legislation to protect children." In a country with as many guns as ours
in circulation, no single law could possibly curb every instance or
potential instance of gun violence. But at least pushing forward
something that begins to address the violence would be far better than
the blithe inaction that follows the typical American mass shooting.

~ JAROD FACUNDO, WRITING FELLOW

Follow Jarod Facundo on Twitter <[link removed]>

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