By Matthew Blake,Moms Demand Action
Copyright minnpost
Gov. Tim Walz is clear that he will call a special session of the Minnesota Legislature to address gun violence in the wake of last month’s shooting at Annunciation Catholic school and church.
“I feel a sense of urgency,” Walz told reporters last week after a closed-door meeting with legislative leaders. “I think Minnesotans feel a sense of urgency.”
That urgency, especially among newly mobilizing parents, may be the wild card for Walz’s special session.
“I will settle for nothing less than an immediate ban on semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines,” said Malia Kimbrell, parent of a child shot at Annunciation, at a press conference last week. “And I will get the name of any lawmakers who stand in the way of that happening. And I will invite you to come to my living room and insist you hold Vivian’s hand while we do her dressing changes each night.”
Walz almost certainly does not have the votes to pass ambitious gun reforms today.
However, the same could have been said about Connecticut in December 2012, when a shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School killed 20 children and six adults, setting off a wave of parent-organized protests and public forums. The result was new Connecticut laws that included restricting the sale of 150 different models of semiautomatic weapons.
Related: Walz’s urgency to act on gun violence runs into political reality in divided Legislature
Other blue states, including New York, passed assault rifle sale restrictions after mass shootings.
Minnesota, reliably among the bluest of states on matters from health care subsidies to presidential elections, defies easy categorization when it comes to guns. One gun control advocacy group placed it a mere 15th best in the nation on gun laws.
“Moving from New York, I had to make an adjustment as an organizer to the strong hunting culture here,” said Kathleen Anderson, a St. Paul resident and volunteer with Moms Demand Action, which is advocating for an assault weapons ban.
Indeed, other states including Texas did little to change gun laws after a mass shooting. Here is a look at how the parent’s movement might lead to new Minnesota gun laws.
The Connecticut path
In the days and months following the massacre at Sandy Hook in Newtown, parents and activists kept guns in the news. A New York Times article six weeks after the shooting described “riveting testimony repeatedly interrupted by standing ovations” at a forum in Newtown High School on gun laws.
“For one night at least,” the Times reported, “the legislative muddle of competing lobbies and gun agendas was washed away by the grief of Sandy Hook and demands for measures to make sure something like it never happens again.”
Advocates failed in their ultimate goal to revive the federal assault weapons ban. But they transformed the Nutmeg State’s gun laws.
A preexisting ban on assault weapons was significantly expanded to specify makes and models that gun dealers could no longer sell. Gov. Daniel Malloy also signed a ban on high-capacity magazines, required anyone buying ammunition to have a state-issued credential, and created new parts of state government including a Board of Firearms Permit Examiners.
In an interview last year with Connecticut Public Radio, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said, “What happened in Newtown changed the politics and culture of this country. It set in motion a political movement determined to try to make sense of the nation’s gun laws.”
According to Giffords Law Center, a gun control lobbying group founded after the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona, Connecticut today has the third strongest gun control laws in the nation, trailing California and New Jersey.
Minnesota parents and the gun control movement
Giffords is critical of Minnesota for being one of 40 states to permit the sale of assault rifles, a weapon subject to competing definitions but usually meaning a gun intended for military use that can rapidly fire several bullets in seconds.
Minnesota is also one of 36 states to allow residents to buy high-capacity magazines, which are typically defined as being able to shoot more than 10 bullets without a need to reload.
Giffords also dings the state for not having a registry of gun owners and no law regarding gun storage.
The gun control group additionally called attention to measures the Minnesota Legislature passed in the last five years, including becoming one of 21 states to have red flag laws where law enforcement or a family can petition a court to confiscate someone’s gun.
“These recent policies that are in the process of being implemented are a meaningful step forward,” said Spencer Myers, a state and local policy attorney at Giffords.
Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, the author of a raft of gun control measures, asserted that guns were becoming less of a third rail issue even before the fatal shooting of Melissa Hortman and the Annunciation tragedy.
A 2022 poll of over 1,500 registered voters done by MinnPost and Change Research found that 54% wanted a ban on assault weapons, and 57% favored stopping the sale of high-capacity magazines.
And now lawmakers must reckon with the testimony of Annunciation parents like Kimbrell, remarks that have galvanized at least several thousand Minnesota parents. According to Anderson, Moms Demand Action has signed up 5,000 new members in the last two weeks.
Anderson believes her organization has fine tuned its message for a Minnesota audience.
“We appreciate the role guns play in some Minnesota families,” Anderson said. “But I don’t care if someone thinks it’s fun to go target shooting with an assault rifle.”
The Texas trail
House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, told reporters last Tuesday that she respects the governor’s desire to hold a special session and knows the topic of gun violence is not going away.
“As far as it being a passing news story, it’s not going to be passing for those families of both the victims, those that were injured and the kids,” Demuth said.
But neither Demuth nor other Minnesota Republicans have stated a desire to restrict gun sales. Nor, for that matter, have rural DFLers like Grant Hauschild of Hermantown.
Related: Sandy Hook parents offer community support, policy advice after Annunciation shooting
Demuth wants to focus on mental health resources. She floated the idea of rerouting up to $108 million in funding from the Northern Lights Express train that connects Minneapolis to Duluth to mental health care.
If Walz indeed fails to get the votes, Minnesota would take the path of states like Texas that resisted calls for new gun laws after a mass shooting.
Following the 2022 fatal shooting with an assault rifle of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, a coterie of Democratic lawmakers met with incensed parents who sought a ban on assault weapons.
However, lawmakers kept lowering their goals until the last week of the legislative session. Then, Democratic state Sen. Roland Gutierrez tried to raise the age to buy assault weapons from 18 to 21.
But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott successfully urged legislators to nix even the age of purchase change, insisting it violated the U.S. Constitution.
As the Texas Tribune reported at the time, Gutierrez punctuated the Lone Star State’s 2023 legislative session with a dramatic speech in which he semi-apologized for his confrontational behavior but concluded, “I am angry as hell. And I see these kids when I go to bed at night.”
