If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, as the old saying goes. So it was that, in announcing a raft of measures intended to tackle gun violence in Minnesota, Gov. Walz included — yes, you guessed it — a tax hike. “The governor’s proposal targets several areas of gun safety,” KNSI reports, “New taxes would apply to purchases, including a 10% tax on handguns and an 11% tax on shotguns, rifles, and ammunition.”
The vast majority of gun crime in Minnesota, as elsewhere in the United States, is committed with illegally owned handguns, so, while these measures might catch some people who own guns, they don’t do anything about the people who use guns.
Indeed, at the same time that the DFL is pushing to criminalize gun ownership, it is resisting efforts to combat gun use. As my colleague Dave Zimmer wrote last week:
The Minnesota House Public Safety Committee held its first committee hearing of the 2026 legislative session yesterday. Rep. Walter Hudson (R) introduced HF-3380, which seeks to strengthen sentencing involving repeat violent offenders who use firearms in commission of their crimes. This should not be considered controversial legislation, but in the Minnesota Legislature even commonsense measures run into opposition.
Center of the American Experiment’s Public Safety Policy Fellow David Zimmer testified in support of the bill, noting that its strength was in its exclusive focus on repeat violent offenders using firearms. But this focus apparently wasn’t acceptable to DFL members of the committee.
Following testimony, several DFL members questioned Rep. Hudson’s rationale for introducing the legislation, as if concerns over repeat offenders receiving reduced sentences in Minnesota were not justified.
Rep. Dave Pinto (D) asked, “What problem are you trying to fix?”
Rep. Hudson responded,
“We have a problem with activist judges giving reduced sentences, based on irrelevant criteria — like their personal story, and what they look like, and their skin color, and where they grew up — and not taking into account the conduct…”
If the DFL opposes new laws against actual gun crimes, it also opposes anyone even talking about the fact that the laws we have are barely being enforced.
Yesterday, the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus brought in Amy Swearer, Senior Legal Fellow at Advancing American Freedom, to testify at the capitol on some of these proposed measures. The DFL blocked her, and even barred her written testimony. You can read it here, but this is the crucial section:
One has to ask, if the current laws on gun use aren’t being enforced, why are we looking to introduce new laws on gun ownership?
