LANSING, Mich. — For the second time since their campus became the scene of a deadly mass shooting this week, students from Michigan State University gathered Friday evening at the Michigan Capitol to call on legislators to pass gun control laws that may prevent others from experiencing similar tragedies.
Dozens of students rallied together in front of the Capitol steps holding signs calling for action and wearing MSU apparel. Parents, politicians, and other community members joined in support as well.
Several students, in their teens and early twenties, spoke through tears and sniffles as their peers sat crouched on the cement as if in the midst of the countless lockdown drills they've participated in throughout the years, with their arms locked together in solidarity with each other.
On Monday night, three MSU students — Brian Fraser, Arielle Anderson and Alexandria Verner — were gunned down on campus and five other students were wounded hours before the suspected gunman took his own life.
MSU senior Ellie Baden, one of the students who helped organize the Friday event, remarked on the pride she has had being a Spartan, and the place that she said instantly felt like home when she arrived on campus more than four years ago. But on Monday, Baden said she spent the evening barricaded in her campus apartment becoming yet another American student forced to endure in a mass shooting.
"While I've always been aware of and terrified of the gun violence epidemic that plagues this country, I finally allowed myself to think that I might escape unscathed. I'm graduating in three months, three months until I am out of the American education system," Baden said. "I was foolishly mistaken."
Baden and the other speakers at the rally on the front steps of the Capitol stressed that expressing their thoughts and condolences were not going to be enough, calling on Congress and the Michigan Legislature to pass immediately "common sense gun laws."
"While we appreciate your thoughts and prayers, and we are sending our own as well, right now, we need our elected officials to vow that this cannot and will not happen again. The time to act is now," she said.
They commemorated the lives lost — Fraser a fraternity president was remembered for having amazing leadership skills; Verner for her athletic skills; and Anderson for her love of children and desire to be a pediatrician.
They took time to express appreciation for the healthcare workers at Sparrow Hospital just a mile east of the Capitol, where doctors and nurses have been working to save the lives of five other Spartans injured in Monday's violence. Four of those students remained in critical condition on Friday, a hospital spokesman said.
"They were stolen from us, taken too soon, leaving their family and friends behind," Baden said. "To try to piece together a completely selfish act of violence with their memories be a blessing."
"...We are also thinking of and sending our love to those hurt in other ways by Monday's tragedy," Baden added. "Those who are now afraid to enter classrooms, those who will forever be frightened by a slamming door or the sound of foot just down the hallway. Those whose sense of security and comfort has been suddenly and violently shattered."
Abigail Frost, 22, who graduated in December and still lives in East Lansing, echoed those statements.
"These beautiful souls will be sorely missed within the Spartan community, and we will fight to ensure that this does not happen to other young people," she said. "The time for action is now. Legislators are listening to us at this moment."
Several Democratic legislators showed up in support on Friday, including state Sen. Sam Singh, D-East Lansing, whose district includes MSU's campus. Singh remarked on the hundreds of students and others who had shown up to the Capitol on Wednesday to speak with legislators about their experiences.
"I won't say that I know what you're going through, the grief that you are feeling," Singh said. "But I wanted to say that I would listen and that we would act and we would make change."
On Thursday, the Democratic-controlled Michigan Senate introduced 11 gun control bills, which Singh described as "common sense gun reforms."
Those bills, Singh said, would address issues related to closing background check loopholes, safe storage laws, and so-called "extreme risk protection orders" to allow courts to take weapons away from individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others.
Singh explained to the students that the 11 bills introduced this week will soon get legislative hearings. As the process plays out, the politician encouraged the students to continue showing up to the capitol and reaching out to Michigan's 38 state senators and 110 representatives to share their stories.
"When they hear your stories, the powerful stories I've heard over the last three days, they have to act," Singh said. "I cannot understand how they would not act. And we will help you to organize."
While no Republican politicians spoke at the rally, the MSU student organizers said the demonstration was meant to be a non-partisan call to action.
Before the early evening rally, a few blocks away from the Capitol, some Republicans and conservative activists spoke out in favor of the rights of gun owners ahead during a press conference at the Lansing Center.
"What happened last week was terrible. But you know what? We react out of emotion," said Rick Warzywak, a northern Michigan preacher who runs a prayer-focused Christian organization called Transformation Michigan. "We have to let things settle down a bit before we make rash decisions to get solutions."Warzywak said the answer to mass shootings and gun violence is bringing government officials together with faith leaders, who he said have the answers."But don't make decisions based on emotions right now," Warzywak said. "We have to let everything settle down and go back to the biblical worldview."
At the State Capitol, as the afternoon sun sank, MSU student Maya Manuel said it had taken her days to finally be able to cry, and now she was finding it difficult to stop as she allowed herself to grieve.
"It sucks," she said as tears streamed down her face.
The Friday afternoon event marked the second time the students had gathered in front of the Capitol since their classmates were shot, and they said they would return again on Monday afternoon.
"Thank you for being so brave to be here and stand in front of me," Manuel said. "This is us. We are literally our own advertisement. We are our own voice. We are our own change. You know, if we stop showing up to these events, we are part of our own silencing."
As the MSU students stood on the Capitol steps and talked about the pain they had endured in recent days, and the traumatic experiences they now share with thousands of other Americans who have experienced a mass shooting at their school, a truck with an electronic billboard circled the streets around Capitol blaring an audio recording promoting Kristina Karamo, an Oak Park educator running for chair of the Michigan Republican Party chair. Republican delegates are meeting Saturday in Lansing to elect a new party chair.
Karamo spoke at the gathering of Republicans down the street advocating for a faith-based response to gun violence.
"We weren't going to make this political," Frost, the recent MSU graduate, said as the vehicle initially began circling the Capitol. "But, obviously, they have made it political."
"They are sending around a bus with a video blaring, trying to drown out our voice. They won't do it."
