Rick Snyder vetoes bill allowing guns in Michigan schools

The sponsor of the bill says that Snyder is "not going to sign it" [UPDATED]

Topics: Rick Snyder, Michigan, Guns, Gun Violence, Newtown school shooting,

Rick Snyder vetoes bill allowing guns in Michigan schools (Credit: Facebook/RickForMichigan)

Update (Dec. 18, 5:08 p.m): The Detroit Free Press  reports that Snyder has officially vetoed the bill to allow guns on school property, writing in a veto letter to the state legislature:  “I believe that it is important that these public institutions have clear legal authority to ban weapons from their premises. Each is entrusted with the care of a vulnerable population and should have the authority to determine whether its mission would be enhanced by the addition of concealed weapons.”

From earlier: 

Gov. Rick Snyder, R-Mich., will reportedly veto a bill that would have allowed firearms to be brought into schools and other “gun-free zones,” according to the bill’s sponsor.

The bill was introduced by state Sen. Mike Green, a Republican, and passed out of the state legislature last Thursday, the night before the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

“He’s not going to sign it,” Green said of Snyder on Tuesday. “We don’t anticipate he’s going to sign it,” Ryan Mitchell, Green’s spokesman, told the Washington Post.

From the Detroit News:

Green said he refused to include language in Senate Bill 59 allowing public school districts and municipalities to still ban concealed weapons for fear that it could be used to overturn the state’s firearms preemption law that prohibits local firearms laws from trumping state laws and regulations.

Green said the final version of the legislation was “more restrictive than we ever wanted.”

“They told us Thursday night he’d veto it if we didn’t include that language,” said Green, who says he refused to concede to the governor’s demands. “We just said ‘enough’s enough’ and we passed it.”

Snyder had said earlier this week that he would give the bill “extra consideration” in the wake of the shootings.

Continue Reading Close

Jillian Rayfield is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on politics. Follow her on Twitter at @jillrayfield or email her at jrayfield@salon.com.

Next Article

Featured Slide Shows

What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10
  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10

More Related Stories

Comments

6 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>