Advocates converged on the State Capitol on the opening day of the 2019 legislative session, demanding background checks on all gun sales — something Governor Tim Walz said earlier he supports. Walz said Tuesday, “I’ll negotiate in good faith on everything, but I won’t negotiate away the safety of Minnesota’s citizens…. That’s a discussion in this debate to say, yes, there are exemptions that can be made to have this, but you can’t just draw the line in the beginning of saying, we’re not gonna do anything, we’re not gonna talk about it.”
The Reverend Nancy Nord Bence with Protect Minnesota says of the governor, “We can help him understand that, if there’s a gun that’s being passed in the family, the current bills that we’ve been looking at, you wouldn’t need a background check to do that.”
Republicans say background checks do little to reduce mass shootings.