Thankfully, Minnesota's expansive gun control bill didn't get passed. This is good news for all of Minnesota, even if a lot of people might think otherwise.
Now, everything has shifted to campaign mode, and the fight over gun control will begin anew there. It's not really surprising, but it's still annoying as hell.
What really gets me, though, is the framing of the fight. Let's look at how this was framed from an editorial that, frankly, is about something else entirely. The editorial gets into the importance of procedural control, which is fair, but early in the piece, we get this:
The final hours of Minnesota’s 2026 legislative session unfolded with unusual tension inside the Minnesota House chamber. Lawmakers argued across procedural lines. Protesters gathered outside the Capitol. Democratic legislators staged an extended sit-in on the House floor. Republican leadership held firm against demands for a vote. By midnight, one of the most sweeping gun-control proposals introduced in Minnesota in recent years was effectively dead.
The legislation at the center of the confrontation, Senate File 4067, carried some of the most aggressive firearm restrictions proposed in modern Minnesota legislative history. The bill sought to ban the sale, transfer, manufacture, and possession of semiautomatic military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. It also included expanded safe-storage requirements intended to reduce unauthorized firearm access and accidental shootings involving minors.
Supporters argued the legislation represented a direct response to repeated acts of mass violence, including the deadly shooting at Annunciation Catholic School that intensified pressure on lawmakers to act during the 2026 session. Opponents argued the proposal violated constitutional protections under the Second Amendment and unfairly targeted law-abiding gun owners rather than criminal offenders.
Now, note in the last paragraph how the editorial describes what supporters were saying, that this was a "direct response" to the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis.
I want you to laugh. I want you to laugh hard at that.
Why? Because, as I noted last month, one point of contention was that Republicans wanted funding to help improve school security at private schools, which the Democrats opposed. How in the hell do you get the idea that this was a response to the Annunciation shooting when the bill explicitly excludes funding for the very school that was the center of the attack that supposedly prompted a response? Does that make any sense to anyone?
Of course not. It's ridiculous.
But this is how the spin machine works.
What they wanted was to leverage this shooting at a private school to increase the money going into public schools, namely security, as a means to potentially lure students back into public schools, where they'd have an easy time indoctrinating them into whatever lefty claptrap is all the rage these days. This is especially true when you consider that many parents put their kids in private schools to keep them safe in the first place, since public schools are notorious for having serious issues with violence.
Oh, they wanted to restrict our rights extensively, too. Don't get me wrong here, that was definitely a driving force, but what they wanted was as much control over people in Minnesota as possible, from the law-abiding gun owner to the students themselves. Gun control was simply the handy vehicle to get it.
I don't mind a look at the importance of procedural control in legislative bodies. It's interesting to see just how important it can be. I remember talking to one advocate who said his state group was going to stop endorsing a rare pro-gun Democrat because his vote on leadership roles ultimately hurt the Second Amendment there, because he backed his party's leadership, and they put anti-gun people in that role.
Believe me, I get it, and it's an interesting discussion.
But I can't get past the inane framing of the claim that Minnesota was responding to the Annunciation shooting when at least part of what they demanded would have excluded Annunciation.
