Examination of Minnesota Gun Ban’s Failure Misses Big Problem

Anytime something goes awry, it’s a good idea to do something of an after-action report. What worked, what didn’t, and why did everything fall apart? It’s a good idea to do it after successes, too, but it’s especially important after failures. However, you’ve got to be brutally honest while doing so, otherwise you end up with the fecal spewing that was the DNC’s post-2024 autopsy.

In Minnesota, the anti-gun push that was supposed to change the entire landscape of guns in the state failed miserably, and in looking at it, it would be easy to understand that there were massive problems with the proposals.

But there’s an aspect that literally no one upset by the failure is getting.

Let’s start with this piece, titled “Who Doesn’t Want to Ban Semi-Automatic Weapons? A Deep Dive on Legislative Efforts.”

You can already start to see one of the big problems.

SF4067 is a firearm regulation bill that passed through the Minnesota Senate in the 2026 legislative session but stalled in the House of Representatives. As Minnesota Women’s Press reported, 7,000 signatures collected in a week in support of action were delivered to House Speaker Lisa Demuth — by many advocates, including families impacted by the Annunciation school shooting in August — to call a vote on a House bill. But the legislative session closed without any vote; no legislation will be considered again until the 2027 session.

Spearheaded in the Senate by Zaynab Mohamed (DFL–Minneapolis), SF4067 was drafted partly in response to the Annunciation shooting after two children, Harper Moyski and Fletcher Merkel, were killed in the attack. The shooter also was able to wound 28 people largely because of the use of an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle — which fired 116 rounds in a short period of time. The rifle, originally designed for the military, can fire rapidly and be equipped with high-capacity magazines for maximum danger in seconds.

The Annunciation shooting came soon after state legislators Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman and their spouses were shot in their homes in June 2025. Mohamed’s bill passed 34-33, on party lines, in the Senate. The bill package included a ban on the future sale of semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines, felony penalties for selling ghost guns, reinstatement of the binary trigger ban, expanded secure storage laws, and more than $20 million for school safety and mental health resources.

Let’s understand that the first problem here is that the idea of banning semi-automatic weapons is a legal non-starter, even if states are trying to do it anyway. The Heller decision made it very clear that you cannot ban an entire category of weapons that are in common use. Semi-automatic weapons are the default for most handgun shooters and are incredibly popular among hunters.

In fact, remember that viral clip of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz fumbling with his shotgun despite his repeated claims of being an accomplished shooter and outdoorsman? That was reportedly a Beretta A400. That’s a semi-automatic shotgun.

“But they weren’t talking about those semi-automatic firearms. Just the military-style ones!”

Yes, that’s true. The problem is that a lot of people don’t seem to grok that banning semi-automatics to any degree is just the tip of the iceberg, and everyone with half a brain knows it. Once the camel’s nose is under the tent, it’s just a matter of time before the camel is pooping in your sleeping bag.

And then we have the nebulous claims of Republicans who secretly support gun grabs.

Minnesota Women’s Press last fall reported on the views of five women in politics about the prospect for movement in gun violence protection measures. 

• Senator Erin Maye Quade (D–Apple Valley) said: “There are Republicans in the Minnesota legislature that support some of the gun violence prevention measures we’re talking about — like limiting access to certain guns — but they don’t want to [vote against] the Republican caucus stance. This is running moderates out of the Republican Party. … I would be willing to lose my seat to save a kid’s life.”
• Senator Heather Gustafson (D–Vadnais Heights) said one of her 2025 bills was about safe storage of guns. “Common sense, right? But we couldn’t get it across the finish line. I had a Republican coauthor who had to pull her name off of the bill, who ended up voting against it, because she got so many death threats from her own party.”
• Former Senator Patricia Torres Ray predicted that measures would not pass in 2026. “Not with the numbers that we have in the Minnesota House and the Senate. Members of the Republican caucus are not acting to represent the voices of their districts anymore. They are just voting with their caucus. It’s going to take a tremendous amount of work to flip a couple votes in the Republican House and Senate.”

This is a pretty common claim, but what’s interesting is that they never shout down their own side when the left starts threatening the careers of Democrats for supporting popular, actual common-sense proposals on other issues. Weird, isn’t it?

See, the problem that they’re missing here is that this is a political issue revolving around a constitutionally protected right. While I don’t support death threats of any kind, the idea of infringing on one of those constitutionally protected rights is a serious matter that can and should rile people up to oppose it. If death threats actually happened, I won’t condone it, but I can’t say I don’t understand how upset someone would be who did such a thing.

Yet the idea that Republicans lack the courage to stand against their base and “save a kid’s life” is a common enough line, but the reality is that we rarely see Democrats make a similar stand when it matters. Look at how Democrats in Minnesota have fawned over illegal aliens, for example, including the violent ones, despite numerous people being murdered by them.

What’s missing in this supposed deep dive into what happened is that this was simply a reach by the state to try to legislate away a popular firearm that’s actually not used for crime often by any metric, all because it’s scary. There’s no look at the actual crime statistics or anything else. Nor is there any mention of how this was all supposedly about the Annunciation shooting, yet Democrats didn’t want increased funding for school security for private schools. You know, like Annunciation Catholic School.

This wasn’t a heartfelt response to a horrific crime. It was a power grab, and while the writers did quote a couple of Republicans who said as much, the truth is that they put it way down in the piece, almost as if it didn’t matter, while that was the crux of the problem.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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