REGIONAL — Gov. Tim Walz is urging Minnesota lawmakers to take up a comprehensive gun violence prevention package, tying the effort to last summer’s shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis.
The governor’s proposal, announced last week, spans more than a dozen policy changes. It combines bans on semiautomatic “military-style” assault weapons and large-capacity magazines with a ban on so-called ghost guns, mandatory reporting of lost or stolen firearms, safe-storage requirements, a firearm liability insurance mandate and a new tax on firearms and ammunition. It would also repeal the state’s preemption of local gun laws, create an Office of Gun Violence Prevention, and expand funding for school safety and early intervention programs.
Some related steps, including expanded education around Minnesota’s extreme risk protection order law and the creation of a statewide safety council, have already been set in motion by executive order. But the bulk of the governor’s agenda requires legislative approval.
Walz has described the Annunciation shooting as a turning point and urged bipartisan action. Outside the Capitol, dozens of empty school desks were installed as a memorial to children killed by gun violence in recent years, with two honoring the Annunciation victims. The visual was hard to miss. So, too, was the political reality waiting inside the committee rooms.
Within hours of the governor’s news conference, the highest-profile pieces of the package ran into resistance.
In the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee, a bill to ban possession of semiautomatic military-style assault weapons failed to advance on a 10-10 party-line vote. A companion measure targeting large-capacity magazines was debated in the same setting. In a House evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, a tie vote functions as a full stop.
Another major component of the governor’s plan, repeal of state preemption, would allow cities to enact their own firearm regulations rather than being bound by a single statewide standard. That proposal stalled on a 6-6 vote in the House Elections Finance and Government Operations Committee.
Democrats hold a one-seat majority in the Senate, where companion measures have been introduced and referred to committee. But in the House, any bill must attract at least some bipartisan support to move beyond its first stop.
The votes underscored two competing approaches to the same problem. Democratic leaders have centered their response on restricting access to specific weapons and devices, along with tightening reporting and storage requirements. Republican leaders have emphasized school safety, mental health services and broader public safety strategies, arguing that new bans are not the solution.
What hasn’t drawn as much attention is just how crowded the legislative field has become.
A review of bills filed this session, based on tracking by the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, shows 138 measures that address gun policy in some form. Of those, 55 are aligned with what the caucus categorizes as pro-gun priorities, 37 fall into gun-restriction proposals and 46 fit into a broader “other” category, which includes bills on which the caucus has taken a neutral position.
When those filings are grouped by policy idea rather than bill number, they represent roughly 50 distinct themes.
On the pro-gun side, the heaviest clusters involve proposals for permitless carry, elimination of Minnesota’s duty to retreat before using force in self-defense and changes to deer hunting regulations, including elimination of shotgun zones. Other bills would lower the age for obtaining a permit to carry, create lifetime permits or clarify that enrollment in the state’s medical cannabis registry cannot, by itself, disqualify someone from firearm ownership.
On the gun-restriction side, the focus is tighter. Assault weapon and magazine bans account for multiple companion bills. Ghost gun prohibitions, extreme risk protection order procedures, firearm training and record-keeping requirements and repeal of local preemption appear repeatedly. Several of those themes line up directly with the governor’s package.
The caucus’s “other” category includes proposals requiring loaded firearms to be stored where prohibited persons cannot access them, increasing penalties for certain firearm-related crimes, funding violence prevention research and boosting school safety resources. Some of those bills have moved through hearings with far less public friction than the headline-grabbing bans.
In a divided Legislature, tie votes can stall a bill without ending the broader debate. Measures can be amended, folded into larger public safety packages or revived later in the session.