Thanks for tuning in the O.T.R.

Our guest this week is Democratic State Senator Rosemary Bayer with an update on gun safety efforts in the legislature.

Our lead story, the president's State of the Union.

How does it play in Michigan?

Around the OTR table, Chad Livingood, Zoey Clark and Bill Ballenger sitting with us as we get the inside out.

Off the Record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible, in part by Martin Waymire, a full service strategic communications agency, partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

Learn more at MartinWaymire.com.

And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to Off the Record studio C on this Friday morning.

We are not national correspondents, but we can certainly react to what we saw.

We can act like them.

Well speak for yourself.

Okay.

I have trouble being me alright.

So what did you make of the speech last night?

Visa vie the people in Michigan.

Yeah, well, I mean, we were talking a little earlier, just I mean, specifically Michigan, the number of UAW folks that were there.

We saw Sean Fein even step up and give like kind of a like fist bump hand waving.

Yeah, one of these.

Like thank you.

Thank you.

Which is so interesting from, you know what, a year ago when there was, you know, is here, isn't he is the UAW not going to endorse?

But I mean, overall, when we're talking about the speech, I guess I will, you know, do the national thing for a while.

I think what you're hearing is it was a campaign speech, right.

Enveloped in a State of the Union, which is not shocking.

This is a president who probably has had the largest audience yesterday.

You know, he declined to do the interview after the the Super Bowl, which is usually where presidents get the most viewership.

And so this was sort of the time to speak to the American people in a very large audience before November, you know, now 241 days away.

All right.

So, Billy, if you were one of the people in Michigan who's not sure about Joe Biden, I maybe was there before, but I'm not sure now that he moved anybody.

He might have moved them slightly, but I'm not convinced.

It was as though he just said a campaign speech more than a statesman like State of the Union.

But it was spirited.

And I think he addressed one of his biggest issues, and that is the age issue and the doddering senile issue.

And I think for the most part, he convinced people he had the fire in his belly and he could articulate things well.

He was up past 9:00.

The speech.

That's late for even me sometimes.

Just like in the past in the States, the speech did go right after his opponents.

I mean, in particular, he obviously referenced my former my predecessor, sir, at least 15 times.

But there were some so there were some pretty clever ways that they went after folks right at the beginning where he he lays out, you know, the need for for aid for Ukraine.

Then he quotes Ronald Reagan, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

All of a sudden, Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, is clapping.

Yes.

Yes.

And then he says and then he quotes Donald Trump, Mr. Putin, do whatever the hell you want.

And that is that is literally what Donald Trump said.

And all of a sudden, Mike Mike Johnson was like, Oh, boy, huh?

And I mean.

How do I get out of here?

He trapped him.

I mean, it was it was it was brilliant speech writing on that part.

And the way that they executed, the way they came out with these sort of these these these right out of the gate just in case people people do drop off, you know, just like anything else, whether it's TV or, you know, the first, you know, four or five in column inches of a newspaper article, they do drop off.

And so they they just get you.

Heard that point across the state right there.

Right.

Getting at Ukraine early and getting at abortion rights early and getting after the January six division here that still exists about what happened when there was an attempt to have a peaceful transfer of power.

He just went right after those top issues out of the gate.

And I thought that was pretty pretty well done.

You know, we often talk about debates that you don't necessarily win a debate, but you can certainly lose them.

And I think for many folks going thinking about Biden going into the speech was I don't know that he could do that much at this point to win.

Right.

The State of the Union just because there are right now we know voters are angry and his approval rate is underwater and actually the lowest that it's been.

And so I don't think that he necessarily like won over a huge amount of voters, but I don't know that he took a step backwards.

Well, you're seeing status quo.

I mean, to some extent, although, again, when you look at sort of all of the headlines, I mean, as Bill was saying, like feisty, fiery, you know, as I was saying earlier, he had his Wheaties and I think he needed to do that.

But again, for some voters who still think, you know, he's he's just not for me, I don't know what you can do at that point.

Some voters will still look at it and say, that's an angry old man up there shaking his fist and and that is that is the problem is going to be very hard to overcome.

Then there is just a general apathy among among some segments of the Democratic vote you see right now some some black leaders in the state, Warren Evans, Wayne County executive getting very vocal that that there is no communication to black leaders.

Sheldon Neeley, the mayor of Flint, other other black leaders are starting to say this out loud and then you add in the already major discontent among Arab leaders, which he just had a little mini revolt among among Arab leaders, including the the House majority floor leader, Abraham Amash, and the mayor of Dearborn.

There is just a, you know, a simmering problem here on the left for for the president.

And they have not addressed it yet.

I mean, there wasn't anything in that speech that addressed Gaza.

And other than we're going to build up temporary port to help get more aid in there, only because Israel won't let the aid come in through its gates.

Well, in the first place, they go to open an office.

He's not in downtown Detroit, but where Madison Heights.

Yeah, right.

There is definitely an A there's you can definitely sense by some of the moves being made by the Biden campaign that there is concern about about blue collar union workers.

I mean, why would else would you put the president of the UAW in the in the first lady suite and give him a shout out like that if you were not trying to continue to appeal to labor union leaders?

He didn't go to Dearborn last month.

Earlier this month, he went right to Macomb County and was greeted at the tarmac by Sean Fein.

I was just going to say, you know, who did you see him with the last time he was in Michigan?

And we'll continue to watch.

As you know, today, he's in Pennsylvania.

And, you know, we'll watch over the next few weeks.

You know, they this is very normal.

The president gives the State of the Union and then travels around the country and tells that story.

And we'll see again who he's meeting with when he comes back to Michigan.

And next week he's supposed to go to Saginaw County.

And Saginaw County is a must win.

If Donald Trump wins Saginaw County down, Trump is president.

Well, he's just that Trump country up there would be.

Counts well yeah you get outside of the cities.

It is definitely Trump country.

And if there is a surge like we saw Trump flip that county in Flint Bay County in 2016, that's that's Donald Trump's pathway to victory is running up the score and winning in those there.

It is amazing how that I-75 corridor has changed over the years.

Frankly, even rural Genesee County outside of Flint is becoming more Trump country.

Yeah, yeah.

The the women's issue came up last night in the speech.

Let's bring it home now, Chad.

You guys at the news had a good story on this IVF problem.

Where are we on this?

Yeah.

So the gist of her background, the Alabama Supreme Court essentially ruled that an embryo in a lab used for IVF and for getting helping a couple get pregnant, there's personhood that life begins at conception right then and that that tracks with a lot of these life begins at conception bills that we've seen in Congress and in the state House over the years.

And so now you have some Republican candidates, particularly for the US Senate, like Mike Rogers, former Congressman Peter Meyer, former congressman who are who sponsored that bill.

And now there is there is the real life effect that that that if you base on this Alabama court ruling, if at least in Alabama, if you destroy this embryo, that they're discarded and you have you're going to be legally liable for for death of a person.

And and so now there's real recoiling going on right now in the Republican Party because they're trying to figure out how do we say we're for IVF, but we also save a life.

All life begins at conception, whether it's a natural pregnancy or the sort of petri dish, you know, IVF science here.

Here's the sticky wicket for politicians.

They have a record.

How do you square if you're a mike Rogers or a Peter Myers with what you said before?

Okay.

And what you're saying now and the critics say, yeah, now, one that's popular in a goes to proposal three is still alive and well in Michigan.

How are they playing this thing?

Well, in Roger's case and in some others, it's not just the case and what they said in the past, it's how they voted or.

What they.

Want, which even answered.

And now they're scrambling to get on board the pro IVF bandwagon.

Republicans everywhere are.

Even the Alabama legislature voted this week after its own high court ruled, you know, the other way to sanctify IVF.

And Republicans everywhere have got to figure out a way to deal with this.

And I think they've got to figure out a way to support it.

And if they look like they're hypocrites, look, politicians change their views on issues all the time.

Well, then you have to say that.

You got to say it.

And when I caught up with Mike Rogers about this an event last week, I asked him how you squares his past, you know, support for the personhood bills.

And and he said he very much essentially punted.

He said, I want the states to handle this.

I think this is this is a health care decision the states should do.

But Democrats are going to come back and say, look, you either are going to be for a federal protection or this Alabama Supreme Court decision is going to or one some sort of similar case is going to make its way to the Trump Supreme Court.

And we know how that worked out in the Dobbs decision.

Yeah, one in eight families in the United States deals with infertility, one in eight.

And so when you talk about what this means for folks, it is personal.

And I was really fascinated when we go back to the State of the Union, particularly when President Biden talked about his belief in IVF and the need to make it safe and legal, Republicans did not clap and they did not stand.

Now, you know, we understand in politics right now that there is probably just like this, you know, Speaker Johnson saying, like no matter what we're doing, we're not you know, we're not giving a lot of applause and we're not standing in this.

But something that happened so recently that we know about the popular Party, I was really surprised to see at that moment that there couldn't even be claps.

And so I think it goes back to, you know, what?

What are you saying versus what are you actually doing?

And it's going to be really interesting to watch over this year.

Well, I remember those comments were in the context of the power of women at the polls, very, very important things in this state in particular.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think many Republicans, I know they're conflicted on this, as Zoe said, but I think they think that IVF is their way out of the abortion wilderness in which they found themselves.

Since the Dobbs decision, the Republicans had a tough time dealing with that issue.

And it's working against them all the time.

And I think if they can find a way to go for IVF and change their votes and their positions and their attitudes and acknowledge that you're changing it, okay.

You know, look, Joe Biden and Teddy Kennedy, Roman Catholics, they were once pro-life way back in the day before they never really talked about it.

Yeah.

And then they flipped and they found a way to do it.

I may have been wrong on that.

She was if I if I'm wrong, I'm sure the governor will call you tell.

All right.

But but there has been a sea change on that.

I mean, now you have this becoming an issue obviously, in the US Senate race has become an issue in congressional races as well.

But I think you'll probably see some vote this spring in the legislature, in Michigan legislature, some type of bill to protect IVF, protect the right of women, shield them from any kind of future prosecution for the destruction of an embryo that's then that's discarded.

And and they'll they'll make the Republicans, particularly in the House, go on the record about this.

In fact, The New York Times just reported this week that here in Michigan against Congressman Huizenga, the candidate running against the sitting congressman, it was the first ad having to do with IVF is coming out.

And so to the left and it will not be the last.

All right.

Let's call in State Senator Rosemary Bayer from Oakland County, Democrat.

And welcome back to the program.

Nice to have you on board.

Let's cut to the chase, Senator.

Last night you heard the president shout out loud and clear, let's ban assault weapons.

And when you heard that or if you heard about that, you thought here in Michigan, it's not going to happen.

You never say never.

Your right, Never say never.

We got the first round of stuff through.

We're not going to stop.

We're with the president on this one.

Is is it alive and well?

Is it in your committee?

Is it being talked about?

Are votes being gathered?

No, I won't.

None of that kind of thing will happen in an election year.

So, you know, who knows what will happen next year once we settle back down again where we have a number of bills, where I actually have the assault weapons ban.

It's one of my one of my stocks.

You know, we we may be able to talk about that next year.

This year.

That's too fiery.

It's too feisty.

So so what you're saying, it is too explosive of an issue.

It could cost Democrats vote if you went after that.

Yeah, I mean, it's not the thing that's going to help us win in the election this year.

Right.

We just as the president folks, I'm certainly we've made such good, strong headway in gun violence.

We don't feel that.

We feel like we've actually done really good accomplishment on this and we can afford to this year what we really have to focus on is implementation, right?

We really have to focus on getting the most this the bills that we passed last year that are now law, those are the most impactful bills in all the states that are doing any kind of gun violence prevention or gun safety.

And, you know, we really have to focus on how do we make those work for the people of Michigan.

We don't want what happened right away as soon as those bills became law.

Right.

Two, three days later, a two year old who shoots herself in the face with their dad's gun, it was one of a number of guns that he owned that were not safely stored.

And sure enough, the worst thing happened.

That is not the way we want to have people learn about these new laws and how to use that.

And so it's on us.

It's on the government to make sure everybody knows what they're supposed to be doing and help them do that right.

So that's a huge part of what we're up to.

And then there's other things that we can do in gun violence prevention that again, will have the biggest impact on gun that's gun shootings and gun deaths.

Senator, what's the track record on red flag laws around the country?

Red flag laws.

What's one.

Of your.

Opinions on the the the primary effectiveness for red flag laws is in suicide prevention.

And the effectiveness in states that have them for suicide reduction is between eight and about 18% reduction, which is a massive number.

Most gun deaths you might know this are suicide, right?

That's about two thirds around the country and in Michigan.

And so if you really want to impact the number of gun deaths and go after the biggest bucket and extremist protection orders do that, it's actually considered that it's probably more higher numbers in prevention than we can count because it's very difficult to track things that don't happen.

Right.

It's easier to track suicides than to this.

Is it didn't happen.

But we know at least from just sheer drops in numbers, we can see the impact happening in states that have it.

So but it also is on us to make sure that people understand it right.

If they don't know about, it's not going to second make any difference.

So we're on that implementation piece right now.

Senator Burr, know that case.

You've you cited the young girl, the two year old who shot herself with her dad's handgun the day after the new the new law went into effect for requiring parents to safely storage stored weapons.

That parent was a felon who was prohibited from having guns.

What are these new laws going to do to prevent people who are committing crimes from actually adhering to a law that says you need to store your handgun properly when you have kids around?

Yeah, all those things, right?

So the people are not supposed to have guns, have guns.

You know, the the background check laws that passed the new the new law for us all will require every single firearm purchase or transfer to have a background check.

So we don't do that.

And before February of this year, we only did that with a very small percentage of firearm exchanges that would be with licensed dealers and only for handguns.

So it was very restrictive.

Now, even if you are passing a firearm on to a family member, you actually need to get a background check.

I mean, everybody needs to do that.

So people who don't and that includes people who have had some kind of commitment, mental health issue, people who should not have guns.

We're going to do our best to make sure they don't get them.

So that's the first piece, right?

You start with that.

Let's make sure they don't even have any.

But the second piece is, you know, where you do get it.

If you buy a gun from a now even a gun show.

Right.

You have to get a background check.

But they all have to make sure that people know the law.

So in those stores, in those gun shows, is there is a posting that says, here's the law, here's the rules, here's the five year penalty and the 15 year penalty, the fines, it will happen if something happens.

I mean, you have to sign a piece of paper that says, I understand that this is an oh, sorry, go ahead.

So we starting out talking about assault weapons.

And I want to just make sure that I clearly understand.

You were saying that this year sort of about implementation, right, of red flag laws, universal background checks are things that have passed.

There are some bills that have been introduced that we've talked about before, the age requirement, for example.

Are you saying that, no, you don't think any new gun legislation will be passed this year or you still see some opportunities on that?

It was just the assault assault weapons?

Yeah, I don't know the answer.

And so I don't actually control what's on the agenda, to be honest.

Right.

We may introduce some of those bills because we have them and I think they're important.

So, you know, over and over again, if nothing else, we should be talking about it.

We should be making a plan for what we can move those to law.

And we already have the bills.

Hope a whole bunch of them.

And in fact, there are some really interesting new things that folks are working on, things like manufacture, liability.

I mean, that's a really big deal.

If we could do something like that, that could be something that could be replicated around the country.

Or maybe we could get it to our federal government in some way that we could that that could have a tremendous impact.

But there's other things.

Go scans.

You've heard of those guns.

They don't have serial numbers either They're hand printed at home or they're, you know, the serial numbers are removed as parts are exchanged within the firearms.

Periods, too, as well.

I know it's one bill that's been introduced.

Yes.

We would love to see waiting periods.

The other one that we've been talking about on that level is the we used to have these local gun review committees, right.

That they would actually approve people's purchases.

And that was kind of an interesting idea.

And one of the things that I didn't even know about those, I learned about it from some of my people that I talk to regularly who are gun owners who care about this.

They want to make sure that people are safe and they want to make sure they can still have their own firearms and they're happy to follow the rules.

The things that they think have the biggest impact are things like having that local review, which is an interesting way to do it.

We in Michigan, I really love our local control, right?

And so when you can put something like that in the hands of your own community, that somehow makes it feel better to people less about government out to get you sort of thing.

Senator, are.

There any instances of encroachments on civil rights of gun owners around the country under red flag laws?

That was one of the arguments against passing a red flag law that somehow somebody could be singled out by some kind of an enemy or a neighbor that didn't like them and get them in trouble and, you know, have them investigated and that sort of thing.

Are there are cases like that around the country?

Is that causing a problem or not?

No, it's really not.

And, you know, it's not happening as often as you would would think.

I mean, people have an expectation that we're going to have an explosion of these and people are going to be filing complaints against their neighbors or family members of people.

You know, And first of all, everything has to go through the judge.

This is very much a adjudicated process.

Right?

So right at the first step, it has to make sense.

And there are penalties, just like anything else, for false reports.

So we're very careful legally to do this.

Right.

But what again, if we go back to the intent and the primary use of this particular set of legislation is about suicide prevention.

So the use of it from the other side, which people are most afraid of, right.

Going to a domestic violence situation or something like that.

I guess the completely if you go to a domestic violence situation, that's where people are really worried, right?

You're going to take my guns away and you know, that's not fair.

And those just don't happen very often.

The even the just the number of guns that appear on average around the country and states that do this, they end up getting picked up and safely stored at a police station is like, you know, one or two per police station per year.

So there's an interesting little turf war going on in the Education Department as the governor has come in and rearranged everything.

It was the governor right, to take all that stuff away from the state school superintendent.

Well, right is a judgment not to do that.

I ask, have you heard the actual.

Do you support it?

Did you support that?

I support parts of it, to be honest.

I you know, I understand the goal because we are struggling to improve our education system and, you know, everybody has been looking for ways to do that.

One approach is to and I think that from the if you look at it from the outside, to be able to really focus on early childhood more than we have been able to makes a lot of sense to me.

The more I worked in this space before I became a senator on the data side, the more we invested in early childhood, the better return on the investment.

But the governor, the governor overreached.

She went way beyond that, right?

Yeah.

So that's harder on the other parts.

If you look at the after school programs, for example, and even the four year olds, the great start, those are mostly hosted within a school.

And so you're kind of saying, okay, in the same building, in the same setting, the same people who are running the show there, here's one department doing the four year olds, then we have 12 and then we have another department doing this.

And the after school staff is another.

You know, it's it's too many different things in one place.

It's a lot for the school system to have to deal with.

We don't know what the impact will be of that at this point in time.

We don't know.

But most schools now have some kind of arm.

I got to get in here.

And sorry.

We're going to we're going to slop over into great performances, which you just gave.

Thank you for joining us on our programs.

Always good to see you.

Thanks to our panel.

See you all right here for more Off the Record next week.

Production of Off the Record is made possible, in part by Martin Waymire, a full service strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

Learn more at Martin Waymire dot com.

For more off the record, visit wkar.org.

Michigan public television stations have contributed to the production costs of Off the Record.