June 18, 2023
The Honorable Gretchen Whitmer,
Governor of Michigan
P.O. Box 30013
Lansing, Michigan 48909
Dear Governor Whitmer,
This letter is written with twin purposes: first, we want to express our appreciation for your leadership in working with the Michigan Legislature to pass three vitally important gun safety laws. Universal background checks, safe gun storage, and the “red flag” law will all reduce the level of gun violence in our state. Your commitment to enhanced gun safety laws/regulations has made us all safer against the ongoing threat of gun violence in our day to day lives.
Secondly, we urge you to commence efforts, in partnership with our Legislature, to pass into law a ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines. This life saving legislation would ban the ownership, sale, transfer, and manufacture of these types of weapons.
Assault weapons contribute to the unspeakable horror and senseless tragedy of mass shootings, and the value of a ban has become a call to action that cannot be ignored. Over the past decade assault weapons have been used in the seven deadliest mass shootings and assault weapons account for 85% of the casualties resulting from mass shootings across the United States.
Please dedicate your considerable and demonstrated leadership skills to the passage of a ban on assault weapons to make Michigan a safer place and protect our children from the dangers of these weapons of war.
As the Church & Society Ministry of Birmingham First United Methodist Church, we will stand by you and pray God’s blessings upon you as you maneuver an assault weapons ban over and through the legislative hurdles that lay before you.
Your constituents have applied their hand to these words of encouragement.
Thank you,
Frank Driscoll
Church & Society Ministry
