Minnesota GOP Candidate for Governor Talks Guns

With Tim Walz out of the picture now, the race for governor just got interesting. However, let's also be real here, this isn't a state that's likely to elect the next Ron DeSantis. Sure, it's elected Republicans in the past, but it also hasn't supported a Republican for president since Nixon. Hell, they were the only state to side with Walter Mondale in 1984.

And the last couple of gubernatorial elections have gone Democrat. Well, Democrat-Farmer-Labor, which is basically the same thing.

But Timmy is out, and that at least opens the door to the possibility of a Republican governor, and one of the people who would like that job sat down with some gun owners to talk about guns, crime, and the Second Amendment.

Around 40 Rochester gun owners met with Republican candidate for Minnesota governor Kendall Qualls on Saturday at Fat Willy’s to discuss gun policy and public safety.

“It’s not the gun, it’s the times we’re living in,” said Greg Kemple, a member of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus.

Many local gun owners say conversations at the capitol focus too heavily on firearms and not enough on what they believe is driving violence.

“You can’t legislate evil in one’s heart, can’t legislate that,” said Kemple.

It’s those conversations Qualls says he will bring to the table if elected.

“We don’t have a second amendment problem,” said Qualls. “We have a mental health problem in our country.”

The discussion comes just weeks after Gov. Tim Walz (DFL-Minnesota) signed new gun safety measures into law. Those measures expand education and firearm storage requirements as part of the state’s broader effort to reduce gun violence.

First, a note to the reporter who wrote this: The Second Amendment is a proper noun and should be capitalized. I don't do it because I think it's really important--it is, it's just not why I use capital letters for it--but because it's the proper noun for the amendment that falls second in the Bill of Rights.

Now, with that out of the way, I'm not sure that putting everything on mental health is a winning strategy, at least if you want to actually reduce crime. I say that because we see crime go down following the Bruen decision, but there hasn't really been an appreciable increase in mental health resources or increased access to those resources.

I don't think that's what the issue really is, though it may be useful in reducing overall "gun deaths," as about 60 percent of those are suicides, which is a legitimate mental health issue. But for crime? I don't think so.

Still, Qualls is correct that we don't have a Second Amendment problem, either in Minnesota or anywhere else. The idea of focusing on what is driving violence is a much more useful approach than just blaming guns. After all, we know that the United States also has a higher rate of non-gun homicides than most other developed nations' total homicide rates. That includes those in anti-gun nations that are still carried out with a firearm. Something about here expressly creates violent criminals. Focusing on that just makes sense.

Qualls is saying the right stuff, at least here, for the most part. He's clearly got a better vision of Minnesota on guns than anyone in the DFL Party has.

It's just a shame that unless something weird happens, he'll never see office.

Let's hope for something weird.

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