Michigan’s governor on Tuesday vetoed legislation that would have allowed people to bring guns into schools, hospitals, churches and stadiums.
Governor Rick Snyder’s decision was the first significant legislative procedure concerning gun rights after a disturbed 20-year-old gunned down 20 young children and six staff at an elementary school in Connecticut.
Snyder had said even before Friday’s massacre in Newtown, Connecticut that he intended to veto the legislation.
His main concern with the measure was that it only allowed private venues like banks and bars to prohibit guns on their premises.
“These public venues need clear legal authority to ban firearms on their premises if they see fit to do so,” Snyder said in a statement.
Snyder did, however, sign into law bills that make it easier to buy handguns and allow for the sale of shotguns across state lines.
Currently, 48 states ban people with concealed weapons permits from bringing guns into primary and secondary schools, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Hawaii does not explicitly ban the practice and New Hampshire only bans pupils from carrying guns in school safety zones.
America has suffered an epidemic of gun violence over the last three decades, including more than 60 mass shooting incidents since 1982.
The vast majority of weapons used have been semi-automatic handguns or military-style assault weapons obtained legally by the killers.
There were an estimated 310 million non-military firearms in the United States as of 2009, one for each citizen. People in America are 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun than someone in another developed country.