Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota lashed out in an angry diatribe against the Second Amendment during a Tuesday press conference in which he signed executive orders he claims will reduce gun violence.
Walz has come under fire over a welfare fraud scandal involving over $1 billion in funds, with some state employees accusing him of engaging in “systemic” retaliation against whistleblowers who warned of the schemes. Walz raged at Republicans in the state legislature for refusing to vote on a ban on so-called “assault weapons,” and attacked those who viewed the proposed gun ban as an attack on freedom.
“It’s time to start reporting that it is all bullshit,” Walz told reporters.
“We are the murder gun capital of the planet, because people have made the decision to protect gun manufacturers and those who don’t want to take responsible action,” Walz claimed earlier in the press conference, during which he invoked a school shooting and an attack on Democratic state lawmakers as he signed orders creating a safety council and also demanding insurance companies turn over data pertaining to firearms.
WATCH:
A shooter opened fire during a mass held at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis on the morning of Aug. 27, killing two children and wounding at least 17 other people before committing suicide. The suspected gunman, a biological male who identified as transgender, posted multiple videos to YouTube showing firearms etched with messages calling for the death of President Donald Trump.
Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortmann of Minnesota and her husband were murdered in June, while another state lawmaker and his wife were wounded. The accused killer of Hortmann, who is a former political appointee of Walz, claimed he was acting on behalf of the Minnesota governor in a letter to the FBI, according to the New York Daily News.
Walz said he intended for Minnesota to use the data coerced from the insurance companies to conduct research into the public health costs of firearms.
“We are going to use that data to do the research the federal government is too cowardly to do, to understand that this is a public health crisis that could be attacked like any other public health crisis if we simply had the courage,” Walz claimed. “So I encourage those insurance companies to get your lawyers, if that’s what you want to do and not provide this data, but I can tell you, this thing is rock solid and you’re going to provide it.”
During the 2024 campaign, when he was selected as the Democratic nominee for vice president, Walz came under fire for comments he made in a video posted to X by the Harris campaign in which he called for a ban on so-called “assault weapons,” claiming he’d carried “weapons of war, that I carried in war.”
“Assault weapons” is a euphemism that gun-control advocates use to gain support for banning certain semi-automatic firearms with features that provide a cosmetic similarity to firearms capable of fully-automatic operation.
“What has incorrectly been termed an ‘assault weapon’ is a semi-automatic firearm that fires just one bullet with each pull of the trigger (versus a fully automatic firearm — machine gun — which continues to shoot until the trigger is released),” the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) said in a fact sheet.
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