GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Tuesday night, during the debate, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and GOP candidate Tudor Dixon went head-to-head on a number of different issues, including gun violence in schools.
“It's time to try proven policies, background checks, secure storage, red flag laws,” Whitmer said. “I’m not talking about hunting. I'm just trying to keep our kids and communities safe.”
Dixon rebutted.
“Her concern is taking guns away from law-abiding citizens,” she said. “I want to make sure that our kids are safe.”
According to the Michigan Education Association, they believed the best first step to reducing gun violence is to invest in students’ mental health.
“It’s important that our schools have the mental health support they need to help prevent tragedies from happening,” said Thomas Morgan, spokesman with the MEA. “That’s the No. 1 thing that we can do to keep our kids safe.”
This week, a student at Marshall Public Schools was taken into custody after a “legitimate” threat was made.
Then, a Grand Rapids Public Schools student was found with an unloaded gun and in one of the bags, ammunition and a magazine was found. All of it was confiscated.
“We need to pass common sense gun reform so that weapons aren’t so readily and easily available, especially to people under duress,” Morgan said. “We need to cast aside the dangerous and unrealistic proposals to arm teachers. Teachers are our nurturers. They’re not armed security guards.”
Over the summer, Gov. Whitmer signed a bipartisan bill to fund a variety of resources for schools, including mental health resources. Morgan said the MEA — a group consisting of 120,000 teachers and educators from across the state — applauded her move.
However, they believe more needs to be done on the state and federal level to truly curb gun violence, which they believe starts with investing in mental health resources for students and teachers.
“We need to make sure that we as a state are working to recruit and retain qualified educators, including those school counselors. So, that means raising the wages for school employees, including mental health professionals. It means listening to their voices and it means treating educators as the professionals they are,” Morgan said. ”Our kids deserve to have safe, high-quality schools. And, we need our state leaders to prioritize that over anything else, especially partisan politics.”
