Public safety panel fails to advance ban on semiautomatic military-style assault weapons

In calm and measured tones, but nonetheless tones filled with palpable emotion, Jackie Flavin brought the horror of the Aug. 27 mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis to a Capitol hearing room Tuesday.

At the testifier’s table, Flavin recounted the horrifying events of that day when her 10-year-old daughter, Harper Moyski, died from bullet wounds coming from an assailant wielding an assault-style firearm and two other weapons.

That day, 116 rounds were fired, and in two minutes, Harper and Fletcher Merkel were dead. Dozens more people were severely wounded.

Bullets hit Harper in the head and the neck, causing severe damage.

“The damage to Harper’s body was so severe, we were not allowed to see her or hold her or be with her body ever again,” Flavin said.

Months later, she said, when authorities were moving some church pews, they found more of Harper’s remains.

“We had to cremate our daughter a second time,” Flavin said.

“Parents in our community don’t sleep all the way through the night anymore,” she said. “Because when we send our children out into the world, we know that there are weapons out there capable of turning an ordinary morning into something unthinkable in seconds.”

Flavin’s testimony before the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee was in support of a bill that would prohibit owning, possessing or transferring semiautomatic military-style assault weapons.

The sponsor of HF3433, Rep. Emma Greenman (DFL-Mpls), said the bill would reduce the carnage of mass shootings such as the one at Annunciation.

Sixty-nine percent of Minnesotans support banning these assault weapons, said Greenman, which she called “weapons of war.”

“So many parents have been pleading with us to do what we know works now to save more lives,” Greenman said. “And that starts with getting these weapons of war off our streets.”

But that bill now faces a slimmer likelihood of becoming law because the committee failed to advance it, as amended, on a 10-10 party-line vote.

Opposition came from Republicans and gun lobbyists.

Rep. Walter Hudson (R-Albertville) said the bill would “completely gut the Second Amendment” and punish law-abiding Minnesota gun owners.

Rob Doar, president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Law Center, said the bill is based on a false premise that banning something will make it go away.

“Every time the government has attempted to ban something … it does not eliminate those things,” he said. “It drives them underground, creates a lucrative illicit market, and only empowers those who are already willing to ignore the law.”