ST. PAUL, Minn. — Everytown for Gun Safety and its grassroots network, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, released the following statements applauding the Minnesota House for passing critical gun safety bills. The bills now head to the Senate. The legislation passed includes:
- House File 4300 and Senate File 4312, legislation to create a more comprehensive secure storage law, building on Minnesota’s existing law;
- House File 601, Senate File 606, Legislation to require gun owners to report Lost and Stolen guns to law enforcement and prevent gun violence by reducing gun trafficking, and
- House File 2609, legislation to ban binary triggers.
“Minnesota House lawmakers took massive steps towards a future free of gun violence,” said Kathy Kraemer, a volunteer with the Minnesota chapter of Moms Demand Action. “HF 4300/SF 4312 is a critical measure in strengthening our secure firearm storage legislation – this policy is associated with a further reduction in unintentional shootings by children — a devastating crisis plaguing our country. Additionally, HF 601/SF 606 helps address crime guns and break cycles of violence. We are grateful Minnesota lawmakers continue to listen to their constituents and prioritize gun safety, and hope the Senate will follow suit.”
Across the country, an average of 350 children under the age of 18 unintentionally shoot themselves or someone else every year. In incidents of gunfire on school grounds, three-quarters of shooters under the age of 18 got the gun from their home or the homes of relatives. And yet, an estimated 54% of gun owners don’t lock all their guns securely, and 4.6 million children in the United States live in a home with at least one unlocked and loaded firearm.
Requiring all gun owners store their firearms securely helps to prevent access by children or unauthorized individuals and is a small step to prevent tragedies and help keep our families safe. Rates of unintentional shootings by children were 39 percent lower in states with child access secure storage laws, like Minnesota’s 2023 law, when a child is likely to access a gun, compared to states with no secure storage laws. However, rates of unintentional shootings by children are 78 percent lower in states requiring secure storage when the gun is not in the owner’s possession. If Minnesota passes HF 4300/ SF 4312, it would adopt the type of legislation associated with the most reductions in the rate of unintentional shootings by children.
In Minnesota, approximately 497 people are killed by firearms every year – the vast majority of those deaths are firearm suicides. After electing a gun-sense trifecta in 2022, legislators in Minnesota took action to enact a comprehensive gun safety package that included multiple foundational gun safety policies, including requiring background checks on all gun sales, creating an Extreme Risk law to limit firearm access by individuals in crisis, expanding access to community violence intervention funding, and restricting the use of no-knock search warrants. This session, Minnesota lawmakers are building on their 2023 gun safety momentum and working to pass additional critical bills aimed to keep guns out of the wrong hands and legislation to fund critical community-based violence intervention organizations. Lawmakers are considering the following gun safety legislation.
To learn more about gun violence in Minnesota is available here.