O
n Nov. 30, a gunman 
walked into Oxford High 
School in Michigan and opened 
fire, killing four and injuring seven 
more. The gunman was only 15 
years old. This shooting came at 
the end of one of the deadliest 
years for gun violence in U.S. 
history, with almost 45,000 gun 
deaths so far. Fighting against 
gun violence is not an easy task, 
yet shootings such as the one 
at Oxford High School show 
that the time for change is long 
overdue. Gun violence is always an 
anomaly — until it hits your own 
community, family or friends.
First, 
it 
is 
important 
to 
understand what gun violence 
means. It is violence in which a 
firearm (pistol, shotgun, assault 
rifle or machine gun) is used in a 
domestic or social setting to harm 
or kill civilians.
Gun violence is a threat looming 
over us that has culminated in one 
of the most horrific public health 
crises. Why? There is a lack of 
transparency and research in gun 
violence data collection. Not only 

is data limited, the background 
check process — which is meant 
to screen for mental health issues 
or other red flags — is glaringly 
deficient.
As passionate advocates of 
bringing transparency to gun 
violence data, we made it our 
mission to carve through the 
opacity and find true answers. 
We sat down with Dr. Marc 
Zimmerman, 
professor 
of 
public health at the University 
of Michigan and co-director of 
University of Michigan’s Institute 
for Firearm Injury Prevention, 
to hear about what he and the 
University are doing to effect 
change. 
A young soul from the Jersey 
Shore, Zimmerman immediately 
showed a keen interest in our 
passion to create transparency 
and awareness for gun violence 
prevention. He has been doing 
work on youth gun violence 
protection for over 30 years. Five 
years ago, he submitted a proposal 
to the Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention (CDC) for funding 
for teenage gun violence research 
and subsequently received $6 
million in grant funds “to advance 
youth firearm violence prevention 
research.” 

Zimmerman pointed out the 
role of demographics in the issue 
of gun violence. Sixty percent of all 
firearm deaths are suicide, most in 
rural areas, and mostly by white 
men over the age of 50. This data 
begins to introduce the necessity 
for us to change the narrative to 
protecting mental health instead 
of blaming gun violence on mental 
health. 
This is Zimmerman’s goal. 
Occasional national stories of mass 
shootings increase stigmas about 
people with mental illness, when 
in reality, shootings are a daily 
occurrence. They are a result of the 
lack of mental health background 
checks, medical intervention and 
money for research. Zimmerman 
is bridging this knowledge gap 
and bringing clarity to the youth 
epidemic of gun violence. For 
Zimmerman and us, anti–gun 
violence efforts are not about 
taking away the 330 million guns 
in America, but teaching safer gun 
ownership and ensuring stronger 
background checks. It is a public 
health effort specifically poised at 
saving lives. 
To 
protect 
Americans, 
we 
need more data on how and why 
gun deaths occur. This data 
will lead us to solutions that 

can be implemented to protect 
youths, make gun usage safer and 
provide transparent information 
to our government and medical 
professionals.
Doctors are our first line 
of 
defense. 
According 
to 
Zimmerman, right now, doctors 
lack training on how to have a 
conversation with their patients 
about guns — including safe 
storage and maintaining strong 
mental health. When you walk 
into your doctor’s office, you’re 
asked if you use a seatbelt, if you 
wear a helmet and if you drink 
and drive. Similarly, you should be 
asked if your gun is locked in a safe 
location in your home. 
Dr. Patrick Carter, a colleague 
of Zimmerman’s and co-director 
of the Institute for Firearm Injury 
Prevention, found that less than 
5% of older adult firearm owners 
discuss safe storage with their 
physician even though older adult 
suicides account for more than 
30% of all firearm fatalities. There 
is a disconnect between the data 
provided and the practices within 
medical offices to prevent suicidal 
deaths. More funding is required 
to train doctors on how to ask 
patients 
meaningful 
questions 
related to firearm safety. Firearm 

injury prevention starts with a 
conversation with a healthcare 
professional.
With more funding and training, 
we can give doctors the power to 
limit the number of gun deaths. 
Students and teachers are also able 
to change the conversation and 
stigmas around mental health and 
gun violence. Nobody understands 
this more than Linda Beigel 
Schulman. Mother of Scott Beigel, 
a heroic teacher who sacrificed 
his life defending his students 
during the Parkland shooting of 
2018. Linda has worked tirelessly 
to push for policies such as red 
flag laws at a national level and 
has become a leader in preventing 
further gun violence. Red flag 
laws allow officials to temporarily 
remove a firearm from those who 
present a danger to themselves 
and others. This law could prevent 
shootings like these in the future. 
19 states and Washington, D.C., 
have already enacted this law. 
Michigan has yet to pass it.
Schulman 
spends 
her 
days speaking with students, 
community leaders and advocates 
about her son’s story. By sharing 
her story with young people, she 
is trying to open the conversation 
and prevent another shooting. 

Zimmerman 
and 
Schulman 
understand the importance of 
mobilizing a population against 
teenage violence and cutting to the 
root causes.
For the first time in the past 
20 years, the CDC and National 
Institutes of Health (NIH) have 
recognized gun violence as a 
public health crisis and have thus 
begun to award institutions, such 
as Michigan’s Firearm Injury 
Prevention Institute, funding. We 
need to keep this conversation 
moving forward, and to do so 
involves you.
Red flag laws are just one 
policy that you can help advocate 
in the state of Michigan by 
writing a letter or calling your 
state representative. Increasing 
mental health background checks 
is another issue that requires 
attention and advocacy to increase 
the conversation of gun safety 
in medical practices. From the 
lack of funding for data on gun-
related fatalities to the necessary 
mental health focus that should be 
enforced in background checks to 
facilitating conversations within 
medical practices, there are many 
areas to leave an impact. It starts 
with having a conversation with 
your peers.

 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Opinion
10 — Wednesday, January 12, 2022 

ALYSSA FLETCHER & 
DANIEL SILVERS
Daily Contributors

Design by Maddy Leja, Opinion Cartoonist

A

s Martin Luther King Jr. 
Day approaches on January 
17, we must remember his 
dream that one day people of every 
race would be treated as equals. In his 
“I Have a Dream” speech, he famously 
urges his listeners to fight for their 
equality with peaceful protest rather 
than with violence.
Despite the fact that this speech was 
delivered over half a century ago, in 
1963, and was one of the most poignant 
and influential moments in U.S. history, 
his dream of racial equality has yet 
to be fulfilled. To ask for the idea of 
racial equality to be upheld is not an 
exorbitant demand; the current state of 
our nation, however, suggests that this 
demand may have required more than 
King expected.
Though MLK Day is recognized as 
a federal holiday, Robert E. Lee Day is 
recognized as a state holiday in several 
southern states. The precise date of this 
holiday varies by state but often falls 
on the third Monday of January each 
year, as does MLK Day. Lawmakers’ 
justification for this dual holiday is the 
inconvenience of having two separate 
holidays in January. In Alabama in 
particular, the celebration of Lee is 
even grander than that of King. 
The antithesis of these two historical 
figures is notable, with one being a 
former Confederate general who fought 
for the rights of white slave owners to 
own Black people and the other being a 
civil rights leader who lobbied tirelessly 
for equal rights. The celebration of a 
man who owned almost 200 slaves, who 
fought against our nation’s foundations 
of racial equality and who was indicted 
for treason for attempting to divide the 
country, is disgusting, especially when 
it is seemingly designed to undermine 
the celebration of his exact opposite.
Even if Robert E. Lee Day were 
celebrated on a different date than 
MLK Day, it would remain a major 
issue. Its celebration exemplifies how 

the Confederacy has remained an 
influential and revered part of history 
for many Americans. The Confederacy’s 
persistence is further displayed in 
the many United States citizens who 
still proudly wave the Confederate 
flag today. While those who fly this 
flag may justify it on the grounds of 
Southern pride, it undoubtedly still 
carries the weight of racism and white 
supremacy. The continuing veneration 
of the Confederacy is just one of many 
examples of the racial inequality that 
still pervades our nation today. 
While Dr. King proudly advocated 
for rooting out racism, many people 
seem to have forgotten MLK’s message 
of the virtues of peaceful protest. While 
the vast majority, 93%, of 2020’s Black 
Lives Matter protests were peaceful, 
the other 7% resulted in nine people 
dying and over $1 billion of property 
damage. However, it is arguable that 
these violent riots are truly what 
opened the eyes of many. 
It’s easy to view this violence as an 
unacceptable repudiation of MLK’s 
message, a betrayal of the ideals that 
inspired the Civil Rights Act in favor 
of senseless violence. However, to 
hold this view would be to ignore the 
observations, and consequent changes 
of belief, that King made later in life. 
Toward the end of his lifetime, King’s 
popularity waned. He was abandoned 
by many of his white, moderate 
supporters and expressed the fear that 
white moderates might be a greater 
enemy to him than radicals due to their 
desire for order. These were the same 
individuals that King excoriated in his 
“Letter From a Birmingham Jail” for 
preferring an “absence of tension” to 
the “presence of justice.”
This attitude explains a speech he 
gave right here in Michigan just three 
weeks before his assassination, titled 
“The Other America.” In this speech, he 
denounces the lack of improvements in 
standard of living for Black Americans 
in the previous years, despite gaining 
greater legal rights, and seemingly 
addresses those who would denounce 
riots as antithetical to his vision with 

the phrase “a riot is the language of the 
unheard.” Essentially, while he finds it 
regrettable that riots continue to occur, 
he recognizes that to condemn them 
without first eliminating the injustice 
that causes them is hypocritical and 
ultimately futile.
It seems that the day King dreamed 
of was further off than he may have 
thought, and, even if conditions had 
changed radically in the months 
following this speech, his assassination 
a short time later means that he would 
never have been able to see it. The fact 
that nearly 54 years later his dream 
has still not been fulfilled has led many 
to lose hope. This is a mistake. Our 
generation is more socially aware than 
any generation thus far. While we may 
not have the capacity to change the 
current state of affairs right now, we do 
have the power to teach our children the 
ideals of racial equality. Our children 
can then pass these values to their own 
children. This will eventually lead us to 
a permanent escape from the society of 
inequality we live in; we may even see 
this change during our lifetime.
The issue of racial inequality is wide 
ranging and multifaceted, so much so 
that I have barely scraped the surface 
of it. Rather than taking the day off of 
classes to relax on Jan. 17, I encourage 
you to really think about why we 
have this day off. Reread King’s most 
famous speech, “I Have A Dream,” and 
appreciate not only his rhetoric but the 
goal he had in mind. 
After taking time to understand his 
message, I ask that you consider how 
you will spread it. At any instance of 
injustice, we cannot hesitate to speak 
up, we must take efforts in extending 
this message to our friends, family and 
other relations. 
Our 
generation, 
especially 
Michigan’s leaders and best, has the 
capacity to make King’s dream come 
true. In doing this, we are making the 
dream of millions of other oppressed 
people come true as well. When this day 
finally comes, I am sure Martin Luther 
King Jr. will be smiling from afar.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is yet to be fulfilled

ANNA TRUPIANO
Opinion Columnist

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