• Regulate high capacity magazines and weapons of war.
• Take additional steps to regulate untraceable “ghost guns”.
• Mandated tracing of firearms used in crimes.

Every time I leave a classroom I’ve just taught in at the University of Minnesota, I see posters instructing me what to do if a hostile intruder enters the building: I have been trained to “Get Out, Hide Out, Keep Out.” I’m angry that our response to gun violence has been to train our students and teachers to hide. We have let our children and students down: they should not have to be the brave ones who are forced to face hostile intruders and deal with the stress and distractions of a potentially-unsafe learning environment. Instead, it is the gun manufacturers, violent gun users, and the NRA who must change to fit our desire for a peaceful and safe society.

I first ran for office because I wanted to address gun violence after the back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton in August 2019. Nothing has changed since then, and in the two years since I first ran for Senate, there have been countless additional shootings. Death by suicide account for the majority of US gun deaths (accounting for 54% of all gun-related deaths in the US). In 2020, 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC.

I watched with pride as my friends and former colleagues began to make progress on controlling gun violence in Minnesota, with passage of the first common sense gun legislation and reform during the 2023 Legislative Session! We can and will do more, but only if we maintain the DFL majority in both the Minnesota House and the Senate.

I am a gun owner. My dad was a gun owner and avid hunter, and he taught me about bothhunting and firearms safety. My husband and I raised our children with those same beliefs. We can respect responsible gun owners and our tradition of hunting, all while pursuing common sense gun reforms. I’m not interested in taking guns away from responsible and law-abiding individuals. I am interested in keeping our children safe at school.