ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Minnesota chapters of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, both part of Everytown for Gun Safety’s grassroots network, issued the following statement commending the Minnesota legislature for passing legislation to ban binary triggers – a modification that allows a semi-automatic firearm to fire two rounds for each action of the trigger, doubling the firing capacity – and legislation to require the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension publish an annual report on crime guns. Current Minnesota law already bans machine guns and machine gun conversion kits, but not binary triggers. The measure now heads to Governor Tim Walz’s desk to be signed into law.
“While communities in Minnesota continue to pay for the toll of gun violence, gun manufacturers have innovated their products to become even deadlier, creating binary triggers and bump stocks that allow civilians to convert their already deadly guns into outright weapons of war,” said Dana Hagemann, a volunteer with the Minnesota chapter of Moms Demand Action. “Rapid-fire triggers make guns even more deadly and serve no legitimate purpose for, say, hunting or home defense. We are grateful to the Minnesota legislature for banning these deadly devices, and look forward to continuing our work to hold the gun industry accountable and safe lives.”
Many firearms today are easy to customize and reconfigure with a wide range of original and aftermarket parts and accessories made by hundreds of companies. Gun owners can replace their firearms’ barrels, stocks, frames, handguards, and more to adjust their weapons’ performance, handling characteristics, or aesthetics. Some of these modifications, such as bump stocks and certain drop-in triggers – including binary triggers and forced-reset triggers – increase a weapon’s rate of fire to mimic a fully automatic machine gun. These modifications pose a danger to the public because they could lead to significantly more victims in mass shootings.
In Minnesota, approximately 510 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.
To learn more about gun violence in Minnesota, click here.