Late last month, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed bills banning anyone with a domestic violence conviction of any kind from buying, owning or possessing any guns for at least eight years.
Those bills, which passed both houses of the legislature by essentially party-line votes, wouldn’t even have gotten out of committee had Democrats not won control last year.
“If you have been found guilty in court for violently assaulting your partner, you should not be able to access a deadly weapon that you could use to further threaten, harm or kill them,” the governor said at a signing ceremony in Kalamazoo.
While some pro-gun legislators protested, the bills are scarcely revolutionary. Two-thirds of all states (but not Ohio) have enacted similar laws temporarily banning those convicted of domestic assault, even misdemeanors, from owning firearms.
While the governor spoke about those who have committed violent assaults, the Michigan law would also apply to other cases, including anyone convicted of stalking. While it is possible someone might challenge the law, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Nov. 7 in a similar Texas case, and is expected to rule on the constitutionality of domestic violence weapon bans by June.
The new Michigan law was welcomed by a man who has been focused on gun violence for years. Former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, who led the city for three four-year terms, is devoting much of his time to a group called Citizens For More Peaceful Toledo Neighborhoods. The goal, he said over lunch, was to find positive ways to reduce the constant stream of shootings.
“If we want to save this city, if we want to stop the population drain, we have to do this,” said Finkbeiner, now an energetic 84.
He’s far from alone in this; three other former Toledo mayors, Mike Bell, Donna Owens, and Paula Hicks-Hudson are also part of the neighborhood leadership team.
Last August, they helped organize and took part in a Communities Against Gun Violence event that drew several hundred people to Smith Park; on Nov. 17, they held a public event at Lourdes College in Sylvania to drum up support.
Finkbeiner, who lost a final comeback attempt as mayor to Wade Kapszukiewicz two years ago, said he has no intention of running for office again, but thinks the city needs a better game plan to fight violent crime. During his third term as mayor in 2008, there were 20 homicides in Toledo. Last year, there were 66.
The vast majority of those were caused by guns. “This year, the number of homicides is down, so far, but I think shootings are up,” he said. The former mayor said that a good game plan “for the Toledo Police Department would tell us “that should be more policemen and women in the most violent-prone neighborhoods in the city,” walking beats; getting to know the people who live there.
Finkbeiner, who started out in politics as a Republican but long ago became a Democrat, thinks Toledo should ban assault weapons, multiple-firing machine guns and cheap handguns of the “Saturday Night Special” sort. Toledo did that when he was mayor, but the law expired after a decade. When it comes to restricting who can own firearms, he knows there’s no chance that Ohio’s solidly Republican legislature will pass anything like the Michigan bill.
“But Toledo doesn’t have to,” he said, showing me a story from Cincinnati. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Jennifer Branch ruled in September that Ohio can’t block “home rule” cities like Cincinnati from enacting laws regulating guns.
That’s likely to be appealed, but unless and until it is reversed, that would seem to indicate Toledo could do the same.
Michigan’s Whitmer and Toledo’s Finkbeiner know more needs to be done to stem violence than just banning guns. The Toledo neighborhood coalition is also pushing to strengthen Neighborhood Watch programs, and for them to work closely and “walk side-by-side” with police on tough neighborhood streets.
Never one to shy from controversy, Finkbeiner believes that a lot of the troubles stem from the fact that a strong father figure adult male presence is absent from so many homes, especially African-American ones. “It’s down to about 20 percent,” he said.
Regardless of that, it seems certain that the rising rate of gun violence has contributed to Toledo’s population decline, as it has Detroit’s. There’s something else those who are concerned with “Second Amendment rights,” ought to remember, too.
Antonin Scalia, the late U.S. Supreme Court justice, wrote the famous 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision that held for the first time that people have a constitutional right to keep firearms in their homes. But that ruling also said this:
“Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose … the Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possessions of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places …”
If we are ever going to stem the violence, that’s something those making the laws might want to remember.
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
