Minnesota Democrats are going to great lengths to prevent residents from discovering the awful truth about their bills banning the sale and possession of commonly owned firearms and ammunition magazines. At today's hearing for HF3433 and HF3402, the Democrat chairwoman of the committee hearing the bills decided to limit the amount of testimony to less than ten minutes per side.
That will impact supporters of the bill as well, but given the amount of opposition to the legislation the harm will disproportionately fall on those who want to explain to lawmakers why they oppose the legislation.
Governor Walz says “only the gun industry” is opposing HF3433 & HF3402?
— MN Gun Owners Caucus (@mnguncaucus) February 24, 2026
That’s bullshit.
We had national experts and everyday Minnesotans ready to testify. The committee limited testimony to 8 minutes pro / 8 minutes con on bills that would ban commonly owned rifles and… pic.twitter.com/LLtn2WpCBW
As MN Gun Owners Caucus chair Bryan Strawser says, this is about controlling the narrative. If supporters and opponents get equal time to testify (and a limited amount of time at that), then it will appear that Minnesotans are equally divided on the issue, even if far more opponents of the legislation turned out or signed up to testify than supporters.
The Democrats are even selecting who among the opponents of HF 3433 and HF 3402 will get their two minutes to make the case against the bills. I'm glad that the MN Gun Owners Caucus will be among the chosen few, but Second Amendment scholar and advocate Amy Swearer is one of those opponents left out in the cold.
In a post on X, Swearer says that her testimony was rejected by the Democrats on the committee because it contained too many hyperlinks; links that Swearer included so lawmakers could check for themselves and verify that what she was saying was accurate.
I'm out at the Minnesota Capitol with @mnguncaucus where Minnesota Dems are BLOCKING my testimony on their gun bills.
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) February 24, 2026
Why? Because my written submission contained...hyperlinks.
It is every bit as unhinged as it sounds. pic.twitter.com/a2U27nf1m4
Swearer has regularly testified about gun bills on Capitol Hill, and though she's been treated with disrespect and disdain by Democrats before today, this is the only time that I'm aware of where they wouldn't even let her speak. Well, at least the first time she wasn't allowed to say a single word, anyway.
National Association of Gun Rights' Hannah Hill was also prevented from testifying today.
I was one of those rejected testifiers. Since they don't want to hear it in committee, I'll say it here: Pass this law and you'll have so many lawsuits before the ink is dry - and you'll help gun owners score an 8th Circuit win and a circuit split on gun bans. https://t.co/EIpTavks5P
— Hannah Hill (@hannahhill_sc) February 24, 2026
It's going to be difficult for Minnesota Dems to get any of Gov. Tim Walz's extensive attacks on the right to keep and bear arms enacted into law this year, and they're counting on controlling the narrative so they can gin up public outrage against Republicans and any Democrat who might dare oppose of Walz's laundry list of infringements and put pressure on them to bend the knee to his demands.
If that means suppressing the voices of women like Swearer, who (among other things) was going to point out that most perpetrators of multi-victim shootings" in Minnesota were "repeat violent offenders that Dems refused to keep in jail." Among her citations was a June 2025 shooting in which a woman was killed and five men were injured.
Davion Lazarick Gaines, 23, is charged with two counts of illegal possession of a firearm, and Dechelen Chavez Mastin-Wilson, 23, faces one count of the same charge, according to court documents filed in Hennepin County court earlier this month.
... Investigators tracked Gaines' phone records and found it was at Boom Island Park at the time of the shooting, according to charges. Gaines, a Minneapolis resident, isn't allowed to have firearms following several prior convictions, including second-degree assault and second-degree riot.
If you want to reduce shootings, you go after the shooters, not the guns they use. In a nation with more than 400 million firearms and a constitutionally protected right to own them, it is both unconstitutional and a waste of time to try to combat crime by limiting the supply of firearms. Instead, we need to reduce the demand for firearms among those who will misuse them for criminal purposes.
How we do that is a topic for another post, but suffice it to say it does not involve banning the possession of commonly owned arms and magazines... so Minnesota Democrats wouldn't be interested in hearing about it anyway.
Gun owners and Second Amendment advocates inside Minnesota and beyond its borders need to speak up about the dangers of these bills; to both lawmakers and the general public.. even those on the left.
Someone might not like the idea of a 30-round magazine, but they like the idea of someone owning one going to prison for two years even less. Someone might oppose the ownership of "assault weapons," but is more opposed to armed agents of the State coming in to private homes without a warrant to ensure compliance with a gun storage law.
Tim Walz says none of these bills "impinge" on our Second Amendment rights. He's lying, of course. His anti-gun agenda violates our 2A rights time and time again, and even our Fourth Amendment rights would be stripped from us if we're exercising our right to own a gun. In a state where many people are ticked off at the heavy-handed approach by ICE, where "Defund the Police" was the most popular political catchphrase just a few years ago, some liberals and progressives are going to take issue with what the Dems are doing here. The Democrats' plan to silence most critics of these bills isn't just about preventing them from speaking. It's about preventing everyone else from hearing what they have to say.
