Bill Requires Background Check Before Gun Transfers
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Gun safety supporters rallied at a church outside the Minnesota State Capitol Tuesday.
DFL State Senator Ron Latz is proposing a bill which requires criminal background checks for the 40 percent of gun transfers he says are currently exempted – including online and gun show sales.
"If you went to the airport and only 60 percent of the passengers went through security screening, and the other 40 percent were allowed to go straight on the airplanes, would you be comfortable getting onto the airplane?" Latz said.
Gun owners packed the Senate hearing, some of them wearing weapons, after a call to arms from gun rights groups.
One of the groups ran a video ad calling the bill "universal registration," and worse.
"The first step to eventual gun confiscation," said the ad's narrator.
Gun owners say the hearing was political propaganda, and called the bill unconstitutional.
"It's merely political theater designed to convince voters that something, anything, is being done to reduce gun crime, when the facts prove it does not and it will not," said Kevin Vikc of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus.
But family members of gun violence victims said the measure will take guns out of the hands of people like the woman who killed Rachel Joseph's Aunt Shelley.
"Shelly will never meet her three gorgeous grandchildren, and my two kids will never know the joy of receiving one of Aunt Shelly's big hugs," Joseph said.
Latz is also pushing a bill to allow families and police to go to court to get guns taken away from anyone who they think is a danger to themselves or others.