Minneapolis City Council Adopts Unenforceable Gun Ban

As expected, the Minneapolis City Council has unanimously adopted an ordinance banning the sale and possession of “assault weapons”, ammunition magazines that can hold more than ten rounds, binary triggers, and unserialized firearms. The ordinance is completely unenforceable because of Minnesota’s firearm preemption law, but the MN Gun Owners Caucus has vowed to “immediately initiate legal action to challenge its validity in court,” as it’s done with a similar ordinance adopted by St. Paul council members. 

In a letter to the Minneapolis City Council, MN Gun Owners Caucus General Counsel Rob Doar called the ordinance “facially invalid and immediately susceptible to legal challenge.” 

The City of Minneapolis lacks the authority to adopt any ordinance that regulates firearms or ammunition, whether directly or contingently. No legislative gimmick—such as an indefinite effective date—can circumvent a statutory bar. Minnesota courts treat conflicting local enactments as invalid when they add requirements inconsistent with state law, and they do not require a futile local-law process where the proposed local measure conflicts with state law. An ordinance that is invalid today does not become valid merely because its enforcement is deferred until an unspecified future date.

While the language of the ordinance states it cannot be enforced until state law allows it to be enforced, if the state legislature ever acts to repeal the firearms preemption law that’s in place, Democrats will almost certainly have the votes to enact a statewide ban on modern sporting rifles and other firearms deemed “assault weapons,” as well as prohibitions on “large capacity” magazines, binary triggers, and “ghost guns.” 

This ordinance is nothing more than a political stunt aimed at signaling support for a legislative ban on commonly-owned firearms. Had the city council framed this as a resolution and not an actual ordinance it would be on solid legal footing, but as Doar says, the state preemption law is clear that any local ordinance that seeks to regulate firearms, ammunition, or their respective components is unlawful, whether or not it’s actively being enforced. 

In a statement posted on social media after the city council’s vote, MN Gun Owners Caucus Chair Bryan Strawser declared the group is evaluating “every available legal option to challenge it,” just as the organization did when it sued St. Paul. 

“The law is not optional, even for Minneapolis,” Strawser added.

🎙️ STATEMENT FROM THE MN GUN OWNERS CAUCUS

“The City of Minneapolis is attempting to make a political statement with an ordinance it has no legal authority to enact. Minnesota law clearly preempts the entire field of firearms regulation, and local governments cannot simply… pic.twitter.com/sqbFGDZdIO

— MN Gun Owners Caucus (@mnguncaucus) May 7, 2026

In addition to the written public comment submitted by the MN Gun Owners Caucus, council members heard from two parents of Annunciation students who urged the politicians to adopt the unenforceable ordinance. Tess Rada, whose daughter was a third grade student at the Catholic school when a 23-year-old who had graduated from the school in 2017 opened fire on a Mass being held at the adjoining Church of the Annunciation last August, told the council that,”Annunciation families don’t have the luxury of shielding our kids from the knowledge ofschool shootings. But you do.”

Well, no, they don’t. The murderer who targeted these school kids used a rifle, pistol, and shotgun to carry out their cowardly attack. Banning the sale and possession of some semi-automatic rifles, even statewide, isn’t going to stop someone who is committed to their plan of murdering as many people as possible. 

Annunciation parent Nicole Farrell also penned a letter to the council in which she wrote:

Recently, while helping my son proofread a social studies essay, he shared with me what he had learned about all the changes our ancestral lawmakers made as our country was being formed. Even my 12 year old could articulate that as lawmakers recognized that as our country, our world changed, our laws had to change too. He understood that a society that evolves must also adapt its policies to meet new realities.

Here’s a reality that’s both old and new: we cannot ban our way to safety, especially when we’re talking about banning something that’s explicitly protected by the Constitution. If Farrell believes the Second Amendment is antiquated and outdated, then she should work to repeal it. No matter how difficult that would be, that is how we change the Constitution. We don’t ignore it just because that’s easier… or at least we shouldn’t. 

I feel for these parents, especially those whose children were killed or injured by a sick and twisted individual in what is supposed to be a sanctuary. I’ve lost a child of my own; not to a mass shooter and not at such a tender age, but I still know the heartbreak and grief of having to bury a son, and like Rada and Farrell, I don’t want any other parent to have to go through that nightmarish experience. 

This ordinance, though, and the legislation recently adopted by the Minnesota State Senate, won’t put an end to murder. It won’t stop someone who’s obsessed with mass shootings from committing one of their own. At best it would cause them to deploy a different strategy, and one that might very well be even more effective than what they’d originally planned. 

Let’s not forget that the Columbine shootings that have inspired so many copycats took place in the middle of the 10-year federal ban on “assault weapons.” That alone should put to rest the notion that an “assault weapon” ban will serve as a shield to protect our children, but it is far too easy to cling to the comfort that comes from buying in to the false premise that we can ban our way to safety. 

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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