Flags across Michigan have been flying at half-staff this week in honor of the victims of Sunday night’s massacre in Las Vegas. Flags will be raised at sunset Friday.
It’s become an all too common ritual.
Since January 2011, Gov. Rick Snyder has directed flags be lowered to honor victims of mass shootings and other attacks 18 times. Seventeen of those proclamations followed a presidential directive, the latest from President Trump to honor those who died last Sunday night in the Las Vegas massacre.
Four times were in response to terrorist attacks overseas, including attacks in Paris, Brussels and Nice.
Fourteen times were to mark violence in the U.S., including mass shootings at an Orlando nightclub and a school in Newtown, Connecticut.
The governor also ordered flags lowered to honor the six people killed and two injured in the Kalamazoo shooting spree in February, 2016.
