MSU Students Rally Against Gun Violence at State Capitol
The Story
Michigan State University students rallied against gun violence on the lawn of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing on February 20, 2023, one week after a mass shooting in Berkey Hall and the MSU Union killed three students and injured five others.
The shooting killed Arielle Anderson, 19, of Harper Woods, who aspired to become a doctor, Brian Fraser, 20, of Grosse Pointe, a business student and Phi Delta Theta president, and Alexandria Verner, 20, of Clawson, a biology student and athlete.
Organized by Sit Down MSU, a community group formed after the shooting, the protest pressed state lawmakers to pass gun safety legislation.
Psychology student Asha Denny asked the crowd how she was supposed to take a test with the same pencils she had gripped in a desperate attempt to fight back.
March For Our Lives founder and Parkland survivor David Hogg told demonstrators that if every state had the same gun laws as Massachusetts, more than 30,000 lives a year would be saved.
Student body president Carl Austin Miller Grondin said there were more than 50,000 stories of that same night, all revolving around fear, anger, and sadness.
With 110 mass shootings already recorded in the United States by mid March 2023, the rally joined a growing wave of student led demands for gun reform on American campuses.
The shooting killed Arielle Anderson, 19, of Harper Woods, who aspired to become a doctor, Brian Fraser, 20, of Grosse Pointe, a business student and Phi Delta Theta president, and Alexandria Verner, 20, of Clawson, a biology student and athlete.
Organized by Sit Down MSU, a community group formed after the shooting, the protest pressed state lawmakers to pass gun safety legislation.
Psychology student Asha Denny asked the crowd how she was supposed to take a test with the same pencils she had gripped in a desperate attempt to fight back.
March For Our Lives founder and Parkland survivor David Hogg told demonstrators that if every state had the same gun laws as Massachusetts, more than 30,000 lives a year would be saved.
Student body president Carl Austin Miller Grondin said there were more than 50,000 stories of that same night, all revolving around fear, anger, and sadness.
With 110 mass shootings already recorded in the United States by mid March 2023, the rally joined a growing wave of student led demands for gun reform on American campuses.
Why It Matters
One week after a gunman killed Arielle Anderson, Brian Fraser and Alexandria Verner and wounded five more at Michigan State, students demanded gun laws from the Capitol lawn in Lansing. Within ten weeks they had most of them: Governor Whitmer signed universal background checks and safe storage requirements on the university’s own campus that April, telling survivors to buckle up because the work would continueAP, then added a red flag law in May that made Michigan the 21st state with oneBridge Michigan. Resistance followed, with more than half the state’s counties declaring themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries. Each February thirteenth the campus pauses; classes cancel and Beaumont Tower’s bells ring at 8:10 p.m.
Go Deeper
Read the original reporting at Spartan Newsroom.
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