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A sit-in and heated confrontations were to no avail as a gun-control bill pushed by Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz died Monday.

A motion by Democratic members of the state House of Representatives to force a vote on a companion bill to SF 4067, a package of gun control legislation demanded by Walz in the aftermath of a deadly shooting targeting a back-to-school mass at Annunciation Catholic School, failed in a 67-67 vote Thursday, prompting heated arguments on the floor. After the failed vote, Democratic lawmakers held a sit-in to demand that Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth bring the bill for a vote, but the legislation died at midnight CDT with the end of the legislative session.

“We’ve greatly appreciated Speaker Demuth’s unwavering defense of the Second Amendment throughout the 2025-2026 Legislative Biennium,” the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus posted on X Sunday, shortly before the session’s end. “That leadership has mattered most over the past two weeks, as she has stood firm against the Senate’s sweeping gun ban omnibus bill, SF 4067.”

Walz pushed for the package of gun-control laws, which included a ban on modern semiautomatic firearms, a “red flag” law and a prohibition on so-called “ghost guns” after the shooter opened fire during a back-to-school 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.

Two months prior to the attack on the school, Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortmann of Minnesota and her husband were murdered, while another state lawmaker and his wife were seriously wounded. Hortmann’s accused killer, 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.

In a December press conference, Walz signed orders demanding insurance companies hand over data pertaining to firearms, during which he delivered an anti-Second Amendment rant.

“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, adding that arguments that gun bans were an attack on freedom were “bullshit.”

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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,” labeling them “weapons of war, that I carried in war.” (RELATED: ‘It’s All Bullsh*t’: Tim Walz Goes On Anti-Second Amendment Rant)

The term “assault weapons” is a euphemism that gun-control advocates use to gain support for banning semi-automatic firearms with features that give them a cosmetic similarity to firearms capable of fully-automatic operation, which are already heavily regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimated that over as of the end of 2023, 32 million “modern sporting rifles,” which include the AR-15, are “in circulation” in a January release.

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