DETROIT – After a week of more American misery courtesy of another mass murder, and yet again, it was visited on fresh, young vibrant lives just starting down the path of adulthood. Brian Fraser, Arielle Anderson, and Alexandria Verner — all from Metro Detroit, all bright shining lights, all taken, all unlucky enough to be in the path of a disaffected loner with a gun. Five others are still trying to recover from their intersection with this madness.
Michigan State University shootings: Remembering Arielle Anderson, Brian Fraser and Alexandria Verner
And it just keeps happening — again, and again, and again. The only difference about where we are now is that it’s reached the point where, unbelievably, some young people talk about surviving mass shootings in the plural. I can’t begin to grasp what it was like for those MSU students who were Oxford High School students a little more than a year ago, or even a Sandy Hook student ten years ago. That’s where we are. We’ve developed young people who are becoming experts at “run, hide, fight.”
Read: Michigan State University student reflects on surviving 2012 Sandy Hook shooting
I have said for years if we weren’t able to change things after Sandy Hook, then we probably never will. That’s pessimistic, I know. But what can we do? And just as importantly, what can we agree to do?
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen MacDonald has spent a lot of time thinking about that in the 14 months since the Oxford shooting — we’re talked with her on Flashpoint. We also talked about the new look in Lansing. The proximity to that building made it a natural stop for Michigan State students, almost as quickly as the crime scene tape went up. Can we create change through laws and regulations? Or does this run so much deeper than that?
You can view the February 19, 2023, episode of Flashpoint in the video player above.