A state senator’s efforts to leverage a tragic school shooting in Georgia to promote gun control measures adopted in Michigan sparked a backlash online that’s exposing why the laws won’t work.

“Michiganders, if a minor discharges your firearm and inflicts death on themselves or another individual, you are very likely going to jail,” Sen. Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia, posted to X on Wednesday. “It took the Michigan legislature flipping from red to blue to make a safe storage gun law, which took effect in February of this year.”

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The post, a reference to a shooting at Apalaschee High School in Georgia that left four dead, quoted Michigan laws that went into effect in February imposing criminal penalties on parents of children involved in shootings.

The post came just hours after news broke about the Georgia shooting, prompting Michigan state Rep. Jamie Thompson, R-Brownstown Township, to weigh in.

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“It’s disgusting that you are going there right now before these innocent victims are laid to rest,” Thompson replied. “Shame on you! This is no time for politics.”

“You voted no on Universal Background checks, Red Flag law, and Child Safe Storage law. Sit down,” Polehanki barked back.

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Instead, Thompson stood up for the truth.

“I absolutely voted No. you and your Democrat legislators told Michiganders these Laws work. You lied to the people of Michigan,” Thompson wrote. “Not one of those laws stopped a man from shooting innocent families at a water park in Oakland County.

“So I am here standing, telling you laws are only followed by law abiding citizens,” the post continued. “The criminally insane do not follow laws.

“You will never get the ‘root’ of the problem and innocent people will continue to suffer as long as you keep blaming a ‘tool’. Didn’t your district elect you to develop policies that work?”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, members of Michigan’s Democratic legislative majority, and others framed the gun control package approved last year as a means to prevent mass shootings, repeatedly referencing deadly shootings at Michigan State University and Oxford High School in recent years.

“Universal background checks and safe storage are long-overdue steps we are proud to take today that will save lives by keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and domestic abusers and children in the home,” Whitmer said when she signed the legislation into law in April 2023.

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About four months after the laws went into effect, a gunman injured nine when he opened fire on a Rochester Hills splash pad, before taking his own life.

While the new gun control laws did nothing to stop the tragedy, the shooting elicited an outpouring of sympathetic social media posts from the state’s top Democrats, from Whitmer to Michigan House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, to U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, among others.

Polehanki used the tragedy to take a political pot shot at Republicans, who previously proposed legislation to make the AR-15 – the style of weapon found at the shooter’s home – the official rifle of Michigan.

Roughly a month later, in July, the largest mass shooting in Michigan’s recent history was largely ignored by those same Democrats.

“Haven’t seen … any state leaders acknowledge that Michigan just had its worst mass shooting in a decade,” Malachi Barrett, reporter for Bridge Detroit, posted to X.

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While the Rochester Hills shooting involved a white male, the mass shooting on Detroit’s east side that killed two and injured 19 resulted from an illegal block party in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

That shooting, with more than 100 rounds fired, was one of several over the July 4th weekend involving dozens of victims, Mayor Mike Duggan told the media.

“In the three days starting with July 4th, we had shootings at six separate illegal block parties,” he said. “Three homicides, and 24 other shooting victims. Twenty-seven victims at six illegal block parties.”

Analysis by the Detroit Free Press shows the July 7 shooting produced the most victims of any similar incident dating back to at least 2013, based on data from the Gun Violence Archive.

The Rochester Hills shooting ranked sixth, behind two other Detroit shootings in 2013 and 2015, the Oxford High School shooting in 2021, and a deadly Saginaw shootout in 2023.

The data shows since 2013, there’s been 166 shootings involving four or more victims in Michigan, and nearly half took place in Detroit. Many involved criminals who were not legally eligible to possess firearms.