{"id":163640,"date":"2025-09-08T16:42:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T16:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/do-you-care-about-our-kids-minnesota-parents-demand-gun-ban-after-deadly-shooting-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T16:42:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T16:42:04","slug":"do-you-care-about-our-kids-minnesota-parents-demand-gun-ban-after-deadly-shooting-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/do-you-care-about-our-kids-minnesota-parents-demand-gun-ban-after-deadly-shooting-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Do you care about our kids?\u2019 Minnesota parents demand gun ban after deadly shooting – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Families say they will \u2018settle for nothing less\u2019 than instant ban on semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines
Some parents whose children were wounded in the recent deadly school shooting<\/a> in Minnesota are demanding greater gun safety measures as the divided legislature gets ready to debate the state\u2019s response this week.
Mothers and fathers have gone public to highlight the acute suffering being endured by their children in the aftermath of last month\u2019s attack by a shooter<\/a> that killed two children and injured 17 others while they were at prayer at the Annunciation Catholic school, traumatizing the community<\/a> in south Minneapolis.
In powerful testimony, Malia Kimbrell, whose nine-year old daughter Vivian St Clair is recovering from two gunshots in the back and one in the arm, addressed lawmakers, saying<\/a> that she will \u201csettle for nothing less\u201d than an immediate ban on semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines.
\u201cI will get the names of any lawmakers who stand in the way of that happening and I will invite you to come to my living room and insist that you hold Vivian\u2019s hand while we do her dressing changes each night and she cries the entire time,\u201d Kimbrell said.
\u201cYou can look her in the eye while you cleanse her bullet wounds, and you can tell her to her face why you are opposed to keeping her safe. Why a semi-automatic rifle is more valuable than her life,\u201d she said. She added: \u201cTo our lawmakers and people in power: who the hell is going to do something? Are you courageous or are you a coward? Do you care about our kids? Don\u2019t tell us the answer, show us. Prove it.\u201d
Kimbrell\u2019s speech at the medical center where she works and which treated her daughter came a day after US vice-president JD Vance met families of the victims. Among the families who met Vance were the parents of 12-year old Lydia Kaiser, who underwent brain surgery to remove bullet fragments.
In a letter addressed to Vance, Lydia\u2019s father Harry Kaiser said:<\/a> \u201cOn just this one issue of gun violence, will you please promise me, as a father and a Catholic, that you will earnestly support the study of what is wrong with our culture, that we are the country that has the worst mass shooter problem?\u201d
Kaiser added: \u201cWill you please promise to pursue, despite powerful lobbies, some commonsense, bipartisan legislation as a starting point, so we can come out of our corners and find the values that we share so that this time, some progress is made. Thoughts and prayers haven\u2019t been enough.\u201d
Similarly, Brittany Haeg, mother of six-year-old David Haeg, who was shot, urged lawmakers to enact stricter gun control as she described her son\u2019s ordeal of suffering from a torn spleen and head grazes due to multiple gunshot wounds.
\u201cHe gets upset, sad, clingy \u2026 and also just mad,\u201d she said, adding: \u201cI hope that Minnesota<\/a> lawmakers make change \u2026 Minnesota has a fair number of laws related to gun control and regulation, and it\u2019s good that states are doing that work, but without national change, there are limits to what an individual state can do to solve this problem.\u201d
Minnesota\u2019s Democratic governor Tim Walz is calling a special session on gun legislation and will propose<\/a> a \u201cvery comprehensive\u201d package on gun control.
\u201cI\u2019m going to need some Republicans to break with the orthodoxy and say that we need to do something on guns,\u201d he said.
Yet the state legislature remains divided, with Republicans focused on improving school safety and mental health resources, while many Democrats push for stricter gun regulations.
Kimbrell acknowledged that many hunt or have permits to carry concealed firearms and said \u201cthat\u2019s not what I\u2019m talking about\u201d, instead asking lawmakers to stop military-style rifles for the general public.
Minnesota\u2019s House Republicans have released a school safety agenda<\/a> that focuses on safety measures in school and more mental health treatment not gun control.
Minnesota\u2019s Republican House speaker Lisa Demuth sent a statement to the Guardian that said: \u201cIf [Walz] decides to call a special session, anything that we do needs to have bipartisan support\u2026If governor Walz and Democrats are focused on partisan accusations and demands, this special [legislative] session will not be productive for the people of Minnesota.\u201d
Republican state representative Elliot Engen said in a telephone interview: \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do for them is give a real, tangible security upgrade for every school in the state so that we don\u2019t have to wonder if the worst case scenario were to occur.
\u201cIf this just gets politicized as a 100% gun debate, it\u2019s a sad, missed opportunity for real leadership.\u201d
In contrast, Democrats support assault weapons restrictions.
\u201cI fully support a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in our state, as do the majority of Minnesotans\u2026 It\u2019s my hope that our Republican colleagues would join us to pass meaningful reforms that strike at the heart of this problem \u2013 the availability of and access to military-grade weapons of war that belong nowhere near our communities,\u201d state senator and Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) member Liz Boldon said in an emailed statement.
Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers are defending trans communities following reports that the shooter had changed their name and gender to female five years ago.
DFL representative David Gottfried said<\/a>: \u201cSadly some of my Republican colleagues are using this tragedy as an opportunity to attack our transgender neighbors. That is as misguided as it is hateful, compounding the invasive actions being taken by the Trump administration \u2026 This is the lowest, most shameful form of politics and I wholeheartedly condemn it.\u201d
Similarly, DFL representative Leigh Finke, who was the first transgender person elected to the state legislature, said<\/a>: \u201cThis is a problem of internet extremism and radicalization, just like gun violence, these are not transgender problems. These are American problems.\u201d
Such criticisms came amid recent reports<\/a> that the Trump administration is exploring banning transgender Americans from possessing firearms.
And in June, Minnesota Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman was killed<\/a> and a state senator wounded by a gunman with a list of political targets.
Additional reporting by Anna Betts<\/em>
<\/span> This article was amended on 8 September 2025 to correct Liz Boldon\u2019s surname.<\/p>\n

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Families say they will \u2018settle for nothing less\u2019 than instant ban on semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazinesSome parents whose children were wounded in the recent deadly school shooting in Minnesota are demanding greater gun safety measures as the divided legislature gets ready to debate the state\u2019s response this week.Mothers and fathers have gone public to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":163641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}