Minnesota’s Gun Rights Battleground Moves From the Capitol to the Campaign Trail

By Moriah Day

Minnesota’s 2025–26 legislative session ended with anti-gun lawmakers failing to deliver on their biggest demand of sweeping gun control aimed at law-abiding gun owners, firearm retailers and the firearm industry. Ignoring their losses at every level this session, Minnesota gun control politicians fired an immediate warning shot.

House Democratic-Farmer-Labor leader state Rep. Zack Stephenson said after the just-adjourned session that Minnesota politicians would take their gun control message “on the campaign trail this summer and fall,” win the majority and “pass those bills into law in 2027.”

While law-abiding gun owners can breathe a temporary sigh of relief, Minnesota’s gun control fight didn’t end when lawmakers adjourned, though. It simply moved from the floor of the House of Representatives to the campaign trail.

Divided House Becomes Firewall

The political reality and calculus inside the Minnesota capitol ultimately shaped the outcome of the session’s firearm policy fights. After the 2024 election cycle, the Minnesota House of Representatives entered the 2025–26 session tied 67-67, immediately complicating efforts by DFL lawmakers to advance some of the country’s most restrictive firearm legislation.

Minnesota Senate Democrats, on the other hand, advanced a sweeping omnibus gun control package, Senate File 4067, containing prohibitions on commonly owned semiautomatic firearms that were purposely mislabeled as “assault weapons,” restrictions on standard-capacity magazines, additional storage mandates, regulations targeting privately made firearms and renewed prohibitions involving binary triggers.

But the evenly divided House proved far less accommodating.

Several firearm-related measures stalled in committee or failed to gain the support needed to advance fully through the chamber. That included efforts to repeal Minnesota’s long-standing firearm preemption law, which prevents local governments from creating a patchwork of conflicting firearm regulations across the state. That attempt was a direct attack on the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act which prohibits frivolous lawsuits against the firearm industry over unrelated criminal acts of unaffiliated third parties.

A video shows Minnesota DFL Rep. Aisha Gomez yelling at GOP Rep. Elliot Engen after lawmakers failed to bring a bill on gun violence prevention to the House floor for a vote.

FULL STORY: https://t.co/JB8g5Y4tqc pic.twitter.com/9JDLJIvFoI

— FOX 9 (@FOX9) May 15, 2026

For lawful gun owners and firearm retailers, that mattered enormously. Without statewide consistency, lawful firearm owners traveling across Minnesota could face a maze of inconsistent local ordinances, while firearm retailers and manufacturers would face additional compliance burdens and legal uncertainty, as well as frivolous lawsuits meant to bankrupt them.

Targeting Commonly Owned Firearms

Much of the session centered around renewed efforts to ban commonly owned semiautomatic firearms. Supporters repeatedly used the politically manufactured term “assault weapon” to describe Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs), of which there are over 32 million in circulation in America today.

As NSSF has long explained, MSRs such as AR-15-style rifles, are semiautomatic firearms that fire one-round-per-trigger-pull and are among the most popular selling firearms in America. Yet antigun lawmakers continued pushing legislation targeting those firearms based largely on cosmetic features rather than function.

Even so, Minnesota lawmakers continued pursuing proposals that would almost certainly face immediate constitutional challenges if enacted. Minnesota needs to look no further than Virginia, where NSSF funded a lawsuit filed the day after Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a law banning the sale of MSRs and standard-capacity magazines there.

Emotion Over Reason, Eyeing November Elections

Gun control advocates intensified pressure during the final weeks of the session following the tragic murders by an unhinged attacker at Annunciation Catholic School.

House Democrats staged a sit-in demanding votes on additional firearm restrictions after Senate passage of the omnibus gun control package, while gun control activists and allied organizations amplified calls for immediate legislative action.

DFL lawmakers continue a sit-in in the Minnesota House chamber as they push for a vote on a gun reform and school safety bill. https://t.co/aSo7jIQuPT

— KSTP (@KSTP) May 16, 2026

The emotional appeals generated headlines. They did not generate consensus.

That distinction became increasingly important as lawmakers weighed proposals carrying significant constitutional, legal and practical implications for lawful gun owners and the firearm industry.

Minnesota’s session also reinforced a broader national reality about which NSSF has previously warned. Antigun lawmakers are increasingly focused on restricting the lawful firearm market because they refuse to hold criminals accountable for their crimes.

The early gun control road show by Gov. Tim Walz failed. The special session pressure failed. The sit-in failed. The bills all failed. But gun control politicians in Minnesota remain undeterred.

Rep. Stephenson admitted it — if DFL lawmakers win the majority, they intend to pass these bills into law in 2027. That means bans on commonly owned firearms, magazine restrictions and new burdens on lawful gun owners and firearm retailers are not hypothetical. They are already written and already waiting.

That makes November the next front in Minnesota’s Second Amendment fight.

The 2025–26 session proved that when antigun lawmakers believe they have the numbers, they will ignore rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and push aggressively for broader firearm restrictions. This year, a divided government stopped them. Whether that remains true after 2026 may determine the future of Second Amendment rights in Minnesota.

 

Moriah Day is Director, Government Relations — State Affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation