A 19-year-old in Dearborn did what every law-abiding gun owner hopes they never have to do: he stopped a killer.
On July 3 at Fairlane Town Center, a fight turned into a shooting. Cameron Watkins shot and killed Keonte Seaborn, shot another person during a struggle, and kept firing inside the mall. Martinez Long of Oak Park shot Watkins and ended the attack.
The court agreed Long was acting in self-defense or defense of others. He had no prior criminal record. He was working toward his GED. He did not start the fight. He pulled a firearm after Watkins was already shooting people.
Then Michigan punished him anyway.
Long did not have a Concealed Pistol License (he couldn’t even legally obtain one being that he was under 21). For that, he was placed on two years of probation, barred from possessing guns or ammunition while on probation, ordered into cognitive behavioral therapy, and told to take court-ordered handgun safety classes.
The judge called self-defense a “valid legal defense.” In the next breath, he scolded Long for having a gun in the mall at all: “What do you need a gun for protection in a mall, in the first place?”
That question tells you everything you need to know about the attitude in too many courtrooms and too much of Lansing.
Fairlane is a public place. An armed attacker was already killing people. Seconds mattered. Police cannot be everywhere. A young man without a criminal record stopped the threat — and the official lesson Michigan delivered is that the real mistake was being armed without the right piece of paper.
This is what gun control looks like in practice. Criminals are emboldened and the good guys are punished.
Michigan still forces law-abiding people through licensing hurdles before they can carry for self-defense. We still have a Permit to Purchase regime that treats the exercise of a constitutional right like a privilege the state can slow-walk. Politicians talk about “gun safety” while the person who ended a mall shooting gets probation, a gun ban, and a lecture.
Great Lakes Gun Rights exists to say what too many politicians will not say out loud: the right to keep and bear arms includes the right to be armed when it counts.
A clean-record 19-year-old who stops an active shooter is not the public-safety problem. The public-safety problem is a legal system that is quicker to punish the defender than to admit that armed citizens save lives.
Michigan should not punish a law-abiding person for being armed without a government permission slip when seconds count.
Constitutional Carry means if you can legally own a firearm, you can carry it — without begging the government for permission first. Cases like this are exactly why that fight matters.
It is long past due for Michigan to become a Constitutional Carry state and GLGR will keep fighting until it becomes a reality.