A press conference is set Wednesday in which U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Lansing) and U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) will reintroduce legislation that would fund research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to better understand and address the nation’s ongoing gun violence epidemic.
The Gun Violence Prevention Research Act would authorize $50 million each fiscal year over the next five years to boost the CDC’s firearms safety and gun violence prevention research.
Slotkin and Markey will unveil the legislation at a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday alongside Dylan Morris and Devin Woodruff, students at Oxford High School and MSU, respectively, who both survived the two mass school shootings that occurred in Michigan in the last year and a half.
Slotkin is the only member of Congress to represent two communities with mass school shootings.
When she launched her campaign for U.S. Senate late last month, Slotkin placed gun violence prevention at the center of her platform.
Slotkin also recently co-sponsored the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2023 and the Assault Weapons Ban of 2023, as well as reintroduced her Safe Guns, Safe Kids Act, which requires safe and proper storage of firearms in households to prevent children and others from illegally accessing the weapon.
That bill was first introduced after the deadly mass shooting at Oxford High School in November 2021 and passed in the House in June 2022, but has failed to get through the U.S. Senate.
“In less than 15 months, two different communities that I represent have been torn apart by gun violence. Students, teachers, and families in Oxford and now East Lansing have been devastated and traumatized by these horrific tragedies, but even with gun violence as the leading cause of death for American children, too many of our elected officials are out of touch and refuse to take the basic steps we need to keep our kids safe,” Slotkin said.
