What the Hell Is Happening in the Minnesota Legislature? (2A Update)

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-15

[00:00:01]What the hell is happening in the Minnesota legislature? Hey everybody, I'm Brian Strazzer, chairman of the Minnesota Guners Caucus, and this is an important update about what's going on with the gun control bills as we head into the last couple days of the Minnesota 2026 uh legislative session and the two-year bienium, which will end uh here in a couple days. So, if you've been following along, you know that we're down to one gun control bill, uh, Senate File 4067, which passed last week out of the Minnesota Senate on a partyline vote 34 to 33. This bill contains a number of things, including all of the mental health and school safety funding that Republicans wanted to see happen, along with the gun control provisions that the DFL wanted.

[00:00:48]The gun control provisions include a ban on most semi-automatic rifles, some semi semi-automatic shotguns, and even some pistols. It has a ban on so-called ghost guns, uh, by requiring a serial number, banning 3D printing and home manufacturer in most cases, saying that you can only assemble three firearms a year from parts. There's a lot of super confusing language in there about what you can and can't do and a lot of it just doesn't make any sense and is probably just not enforcable. Um there is a new ban on binary triggers because we got that struck down in court. Uh there are uh just a host of other gun control provisions in there as well.

[00:01:30]That bill passed.

[00:01:32]Bills when they pass in one house go over to the other house. So, Senate File 4067 has been in the House for uh well, it arrived in the House, but the speaker, Lisa Damoth, strong Second Amendment champion, really showing where she stands on the Second Amendment, has not reported the bill to the House, meaning that the House can't take any action on it, and that is solely within her prerogative as the speaker of the house. So, this is a great move by Damoth to basically stop the entire debate by sticking the the bill in a drawer or wherever it's at and not reporting it out to the body so the Democrats can't take action on it. So what the Democrats did on Wednesday, May 13th, is uh Representative M. Agreeman along with multiple co-sponsors introduced House File 5140, which is a clone word for word of the Senate Bill 4067. So it is exactly the same thing. And of course, this is a new bill. So, this bill has gone to it's been assigned to the committee on public safety, finance, and policy, which isn't meeting anymore because we're at the end of session. Even if Senate file 4067 had been reported to the House, it also would have gone committee to the committee because it hasn't been heard in the House. And when similar bills were heard in the Minnesota House in committees, they didn't pass.

[00:03:00]The Democrats are now um threatened uh two days ago to stage a sitin if the speaker did not report the bill. And you can imagine that where that threat went.

[00:03:11]It didn't go anywhere. So that takes us to yesterday on Thursday, May 14th. the DFL uh leader, floor leader Jamie Long, made a motion to declare an urgency, suspend the rules, and bring their clone bill, House File 5140, uh to the floor for debate. Um now, this is a motion. This was not debate on the bill, but it turned into debate on the bill as it should. And for the next six hours, the Democrats and Republicans argued about this bill. And ultimately they needed 90 votes, not just one Republican. They needed 90 votes. So they needed twothirds of the body in order to suspend the rules. And they have to suspend the rules because this bill has not been heard in committee. And there were rules about how things have to move. They didn't get 90 votes. They didn't get any Republican votes. It was killed in a 6767 tie. So after that things got a little crazy.

[00:04:17]There is video out there that um Representative Asia Gomez, who is the chair of the tax committee, um came up and told uh Representative Elliot Ingan that he should go [ __ ] shoot himself.

[00:04:33]She's now denying that, but I've watched the video and I think that's what she's saying. Um the Republicans have asked the Democrats to remove her as the tax committee chair um which I doubt that they'll do. And so things really got pretty nasty in terms of the rhetoric after the debate.

[00:04:56]The Democrats did move ahead with their sitin and as I'm recording this they are sitting in their plan is to continue their sitin until the House returns which will not be until tomorrow till Saturday May 16th at noon. Um I watched uh they were live streaming last night for a while. Um they were singing songs.

[00:05:20]Um they were talking to gun control activists throughout the state. Um, I didn't watch a lot of it, but that's kind of what their sitin was was about.

[00:05:30]Um, I checked, uh, I was up a little bit with my dog, um, at about 3:00 this morning and I went and looked and the live stream appears to have ended and I couldn't find any other live streaming.

[00:05:41]So, I don't know if they stopped the party um, or if they, you know, went to their offices and took a nap. Not really sure what happened, but they say they're going to continue all through today all the way until the House gables back in, which will be tomorrow at noon. Um, we're down to the last couple days of the legislative session at this point.

[00:06:01]The session ends Monday. Um, but under the Minnesota Constitution, they can't pass legislation on the last day of session. So the real end of the session in terms of the threat of legislation passing is Sunday the 17th at midnight.

[00:06:19]And it's not that they have to make a motion to um you know go past midnight.

[00:06:24]They can't they actually there's no way to extend this. They're done midnight on the 17th. So, we've only got a little more time here that we've got to keep the pressure up to make sure that no one um comes out in favor of these bills from the House GOP. I think at this point we can safely say that's really unlikely to happen. Governor Wall said some crazy stuff yesterday that the reason the Republicans are keeping the bill from coming to the floor is that if the bill came to the floor that it would pass. But yet, no Republican voted in favor of the motion to bring the bill to the floor yesterday. So, I'm not really sure what that is all about. So, we're down to really this threat. Um, one is that the speaker allows House uh Senate File 4067 to be introduced in the House and then if that happens, then the DFL would still have to make a motion to bring it to the floor. That motion is really likely to fail as long as no Republican goes along with it. The other threat is we still have the House bill now, House File 5140, which could be brought to the floor, but that's going to require a suspension of the rules and 90 votes. So, we're down to about, you know, a couple two and a half days at this point in the session. I need you to keep up your pressure on the legislature. The way to do that is to go to gunowners.naction mnaction and make sure that you're emailing and calling your state rep and let them know that you oppose this bill. Second, no matter what happens here in the next 48 to 72 hours as we get to the end of session, the threat's going to continue because the focus as soon as this is over is going to change to the election and we are odds are not great for us to hold the Minnesota House tie that we have or prevail in the Minnesota Senate.

[00:08:19]And of course, we've got a governor's race here that could go either way along with attorney general, state auditor, and secretary of state. So, if you're not already a Second Amendment Defender member where you're donating $5 or more monthly, I really need you to sign up for that so that we can field a competitive campaign strategy for this fall. And you can do that at gunowners.nly.

[00:08:43]If that's not something you can do and you're not a member today, I would ask that you join the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus at gunowners.n/join.

[00:08:53]Finally, we're prepared to litigate uh the recent ordinance in Minneapolis and there's other actions leading up to the election as well as the election that we need to make sure that we prevail in.

[00:09:04]You can make a contribution to that at the gun owners uh on our website at gunowners.n/donate.

[00:09:11]So, that's the lay of the land. There's the action I need you to take. Keep an eye on our social media pages for updates and some video clips from the debates in the House and Senate. We're going to work on getting those out as quickly as we can. The fight's not over.

[00:09:26]Keep up the pressure and we're going to see through this. We're going to all see through this together. Thanks for all your support. Thanks for everything that you are doing.