As more information continues to come out about the racially motivated mass shooting yesterday in Buffalo, NY — in which an 18-year-old dressed in tactical gear and armed with an assault rifle opened fire at a grocery store in a historically Black neighborhood, killing 10 and wounding three – Attorney General Dana Nessel called for common-sense gun control measures that would keep firearms out of the hands of mentally unstable perpetrators, as well as a crackdown on hate crimes and domestic terrorism.
“While yesterday’s devastating mass shooting was hardly surprising given the violent, pro-gun rhetoric proliferating in this country both online and off, it is shocking how easily a teenager with a history of mental instability and making violent threats was able to obtain these weapons,” Nessel said. “Given the Republican party’s obsession with making guns available to anybody who wants them, with no background checks or limits on carrying firearms openly in public, I unfortunately don’t see crimes like these going away. As long as Republicans like my opponent, Matt DePerno, are able to obstruct any attempts to enact the common-sense gun control measures that many Americans are desperate to have in place, the bloodbath will continue.”
Nessel, the incumbent Attorney General who was sworn in on Jan. 1, 2019 and is up for re-election in November, has long fought for safe gun storage laws, which would require adults to keep their firearms under lock and key and away from kids, as well as the eradication of ghost guns, unregistered firearms that can be assembled at home and are the most popular weapon used in homicides. She has also been endorsed by and received support from groups such as Giffords, the gun violence prevention organization led by former Congresswoman and gun violence survivor Gabrielle Giffords, and Moms Demand Action.
DePerno, on the other hand, favors open carry provisions and zero background checks or other limitations on gun ownership and is a proud member of the NRA, an organization mired in corruption that was found to be diverting members’ donations into the pockets of its lobbyists and executive director.
The mass shooting in Buffalo wasn’t just a failure to prevent a mentally unstable teenager from accessing assault weapons, Nessel said, it was a horrifying, racially motivated crime. Nessel established the Michigan Attorney General office’s first-ever Hate Crimes and Domestic Terrorism unit, which investigates and prosecutes hate crimes by following up on every credible tip and offering departmental resources to assist local and federal law enforcement partners in this effort.
According to FBI data, hate crimes rose 23 percent between 2016 and 2020, and hate crimes targeting race and ethnicity made up 65 percent of hate crimes in 2020, rising 42 percent during that period. There were nearly 3,000 hate crimes committed across the nation targeting the Black community in 2020; hate crimes targeting the same community rose nearly 60 percent between 2016-2020 and rose more than 40 percent between 2019-2020. And those figures are likely undercounts, according to Giffords.
“I don’t think you need to be a statistician to make the correlation between the Trump era and a rise in racially motivated violence and intimidation,” Nessel added. “We all saw President Trump go on TV in 2017 and defend the actions of torch-bearing extremists in Charlottesville, who chanted ‘You will not replace us’ and mowed down and killed a counter-protestor. Tucker Carlson, who currently hosts the most popular talk show on cable, often discusses the so-called Great Replacement, a boogeyman of a conspiracy theory designed to gin up exactly the kind of hate and fear on display in Buffalo. However, as long as I’m Michigan’s Attorney General, those who perpetrate these kinds of threats, intimidation, and violence will be held accountable.”
Nessel pointed out that DePerno taunted Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the FBI in the wake of her alleged kidnappers’ acquittal on federal charges. He has tweeted that the “Whitmer kidnapping sham” was entrapment by the FBI “designed to create a false narrative” in an election year.
“I can’t wait to investigate this one. [Whitmer] stop shredding docs and deleting emails,” DePerno tweeted last month. He also shared a cartoon that depicted the FBI creating the kidnapping plot and Whitmer surrounded by a fake fire, calling on reporter to “print it out and have [Whitmer] autograph it for me.”
“DePerno obviously thinks domestic terrorism is a joke,” Nessel said. “With his record of downplaying domestic terrorism, spreading conspiracy theories, and condoning political violence, how can Michiganders trust him to be the state’s top law enforcement official?”
A former criminal prosecutor and civil rights attorney who played a key role in the 2015 US Supreme Court case that legalized marriage equality, Nessel lives in metro Detroit with her wife, Alanna, and their two sons. Learn more about her campaign at www.dananessel.com.