Minnesota Gov. Walz, St. Paul Mayor Carter, legislators and police highlight new gun safety laws

Those who buy guns for people prohibited from owning them will face more serious consequences in a safety measure highlighted Monday by Gov. Tim Walz at a ceremonial signing at St. Paul police headquarters.

The bill also bans binary triggers and requires additional reporting to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) regarding gun trafficking and seizures. The laws were part of a giant bill passed by the Legislature in the waning hours of the session late last month, so Walz had already formally signed it.

Walz called the provisions a “step in the right direction” and blunted criticism from gun enthusiasts by saying, “Nothing that’s been passed impedes your right to own a firearm in any way. It makes it harder for folks who shouldn’t have them.”

The ceremonial signing came just days after the ambush and fatal shooting of Minneapolis Police Officer Jamal Mitchell by a convicted felon. Two Burnsville police officers and a firefighter were fatally shot in February by a man who was not allowed to own guns; his girlfriend purchased them for him.

DFL Sen. Heather Gustafson and Reps. Kaela Berg of Burnsville and Kelly Moller of Shoreview attended the signing, along with St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, Eagan Police Chief Roger New, who is also the president of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, and St. Paul Assistant Chief Paul Ford.

“While Minnesotans worry about gun violence, gun manufacturers continue to look for loopholes in our laws to make weapons even deadlier, and by doing so are creating more gun violence in our cities and our neighborhoods,” Gustafson said.

She acknowledged that some don’t like the term ”gun violence” because it targets the guns rather than the people who use them to commit crimes. “But our country has a unique relationship and deadly history with firearms and we don’t make our community safer by ignoring these facts. Every day 120 people in the United States are killed with guns,” she said.

The straw purchaser provision increased the crime from a gross misdemeanor to a felony. It also expanded the definition to include all firearms, not just pistols and military-style assault rifles as the old law did. A Star Tribune review of more than two dozen such cases charged since 2014 found that a majority involve women connected to an intimate partner, close friend or relative who leaned on them to get their guns. And many of their cases reveal backdrops of trauma or domestic violence.

Carter talked about how the shooting last week “cut right to our hearts” and noted that after mass shootings gun supporters say, “don’t politicize this.”

“Maybe if this was the first heartbreak we’d ever felt,” Carter said, adding that mass gun violence continues to happen “over and over and over,” including, he noted, at St. Paul’s Truck Park bar in October 2021.

He talked about a “moral mandate” to do more, to go “upstream” with prevention and intervention efforts.

St. Paul, for example, already has a safe storage ordinance for guns and ammunition. The measure penalizes those who leave a firearm in a vehicle or other location where unauthorized people could take it.

The 2024 Legislature considered a safe storage bill, but the Senate, controlled 34-33 by DFLers, was unable to pass it. Republicans were joined by Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, in opposition.

During floor debates on the new measures, opponents spoke about the new laws turning law-abiding citizens into criminals. Many of those who argued against safe storage measures talked about the need for easy access to firearms in their homes for self-protection.

The binary trigger ban takes effect Jan. 1. Binary triggers allow two shots to be fired with one pull and release of the trigger.

Walz and others said the measures passed in 2024 built on the work of 2023.

Last year, the DFL-controlled Legislature passed a red-flag warning law, allowing for intervention when someone with a gun appears to be a danger to themselves or others. The earlier bill included expanded background checks for private transfers and gun show sales and increased the penalty from 10 to 20 years for illegally possessing a machine gun, trigger activator or conversion kit that can turn a semiautomatic firearm into an automatic.