Opinion | An assault weapons ban is Minnesota’s constitutional and necessary next step

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In the wake of Wednesday’s mass shooting at Annunciation Church, Minnesota leaders called for a ban on assault weapons. This is a constitutional choice our legislators can and should make.

The Minnesota Star Tribune’s article positing that the U.S. Supreme Court has narrowed the government’s ability to regulate firearms omitted key decisions from Minnesota and federal courts that have upheld broad gun laws, including full bans on assault weapons. Since 2008, when the Supreme Court first recognized an individual Second Amendment right, it has made clear that the Second Amendment right is “not unlimited.” As the late Justice Antonin Scalia explained in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Second Amendment was never understood to be “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

In 2022, the Supreme Court altered the test for deciding the constitutionality of gun regulations in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. Courts must now evaluate firearm laws based on whether they are consistent with our nation’s history and tradition, rather than how well the laws work to reduce gun violence.

Even with this change, the Supreme Court has never suggested that the Second Amendment establishes a right to possess any and all weapons. Our nation’s history is replete with restrictions on dangerous and unusual weapons, including full bans of such weapons. Almost universally, federal courts have held that assault weapons bans are constitutional.

Minnesota law provides that the Second Amendment extends only to weapons that are commonly used for lawful purposes, such as self-defense. This spring, the Minnesota Court of Appeals in State v. Gaal held that firearms with obliterated serial numbers, weapons typically chosen to evade tracing, do not receive any protection under the Second Amendment. Earlier this month, in State v. Jones, the Minnesota Court of Appeals held constitutional a law that the state argued prohibited all ghost guns — untraceable, privately made firearms that have never been marked by a serial number. While the Minnesota Supreme Court recently held that the statute at issue in Jones did not clearly criminalize ghost guns, State v. Vagle did not strike down the statute as unconstitutional. Vagle has no effect on Minnesota’s established precedent that the Second Amendment allows full bans of certain dangerous weapons.

The judges writing these opinions have emphasized the lethal effect assault weapons have on victims and communities. Fourth Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, described in detail the physical effect that rounds from AR-15s have on human bodies, and noted that “the AR-15 and other assault rifles are the preferred weapon for those bent on wreaking death and destruction upon innocent civilians.”

Wednesday’s assailant used an AR-15 to launch 116 rounds into a church filled with children and parishioners in mere moments. The day before, another shooter chose a high-capacity rifle to execute a mass shooting outside of Minneapolis’s Christo Rey High School. While gun rights advocates argue that assault weapons are popular, and thus entitled to protection, there is no Second Amendment right to possess a weapon simply because you want it.

The Second Amendment does not protect weapons that are not commonly used for self-defense or other lawful purposes. As seen in Wednesday’s horrific shooting, mass shooters choose assault weapons because they kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. There can be no doubt that the Constitution does not provide any right to do that.

The cases upholding the constitutionality of assault weapons bans echo what I know in my heart: The cost of allowing weapons of war on our streets is our children’s bodies, and our Constitution does not burden us with paying that price.