Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

The Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners is criticizing a new 50-page report from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, which aims to build on universal background checks and safe storage policies adopted in 2024.

The latest report recommends required waiting periods for gun purchases, raising the minimum gun-buying age to 21, banning so-called ghost guns, which are homemade.

The Task Force also is calling for standardizing training for school resource officers, and prohibiting the possession of large-capacity magazines and devices that convert guns to be fully automatic.

"There's a number of failed assumptions in this report, the most important being that banning something will make it actually disappear and we know that that doesn't work," said Steve Dulan, the Coalition’s second vice chair. "Bans don't work on guns any more than they do on drugs. So, what's going to happen even if this were to be passed would be the only people affected by the ban portions of this would be law abiding citizens."

The Coalition agrees with having well-trained school resource officers, but would like to see more details.
The Task Force, which is part of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, was launched in the wake of the Michigan State University campus shooting in 2023.

"We made sure that our recommendations were data driven and really supported by the literature and science behind this," said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, the state’s chief medical executive and chair of the task force. "Our recommendations are, they focus on the entire umbrella of gun violence."

The full report is attached below.