WASHINGTON — While Gov. Mark Dayton and other DFLers say the Second Amendment hinders the state from doing more to control guns, legal experts and gun-control advocates dismiss those worries and say Minnesota could have much tougher laws.
“At this point, I don’t think we have an option under the Second Amendment to do what some people are advocating,” Dayton said Monday, according to the Star Tribune. “There’s a limit on what society can do to protect people from their own follies.”
Dayton’s stance is a simple one — gun control is a federal matter and there’s not much states can do in that arena, an official in the governor's office told MinnPost.
But that hasn’t stopped other states from instituting tougher gun-control laws of their own, sometimes even stronger than the ones Minnesota has taken up.
The Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence rated Minnesota’s gun laws the 17th strongest in the country, but still gave a state a dismal failing grade — 14 points out of 100 — when it comes to gun control. Gun control advocates say lawmakers should consider assault weapon bans, increased background checks and prohibitions on high-capacity magazine clips.
In part because state law doesn’t address those issues, the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives the state’s gun laws a C grade. That’s 12th best among states, and the group credits Minnesota with regulating certain types of handguns, requiring guns be kept away from children and banning gun ownership for people who commit certain misdemeanors.
But Ben Van Houten, the center’s managing attorney, said other Minnesota laws are largely half-measures compared to what it’s able to do. Minnesota bans certain types of semiautomatic weapons, but does not have a general assault weapons ban. It requires background checks before you can buy a gun from a licensed dealer, but does not fill a loophole in federal law allowing sales between private parties to go forward without them.
“States have a ton of room to adopt sensible laws to [combat] gun violence,” he said.
Second Amendment interpretation
The most noteworthy Supreme Court decision in the arena of gun control came in 2008, when the court struck down a ban on handguns in Washington D.C.
But while the court said government can’t outright ban guns (in this case, for protection in an individual’s home), it gave significant leeway for the government limit who can own or purchase weapons or ammo.
The court’s opinion, authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, allows government to prohibit felons and the mentally ill from owning guns, and it upheld laws prohibiting them in schools and government buildings. Perhaps most notably for gun-control advocates, it opened the door to “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale” of weapons.
Legal analysts told the New York Times:
The decision in the case, District of Columbia v. Heller, has been of mainly symbolic importance so far. There have been more than 500 challenges to gun laws and gun prosecutions since Heller was decided, and vanishingly few of them have succeeded.
The courts have upheld federal laws banning gun ownership by people convicted of felonies and some misdemeanors, by illegal immigrants and by drug addicts. They have upheld laws making it illegal to carry guns near schools or in post offices. They have upheld laws concerning unregistered weapons. And they have upheld laws banning machine guns and sawed-off shotguns.
Nor does Heller impose any major hurdles to many of the most common legislative proposals in the wake of the Newtown shootings … Among the responses that Heller allows, he said, are better background checks, enhanced mental health reporting and a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips.
Some states have run afoul to the Heller decision, however. Last week a federal court overturned an Illinois law prohibiting concealed weapons in public places, citing Heller directly.
Other state laws
Minnesota’s gun laws are in the top half of the states, according to the Brady Campaign and the Law Center, but they fall short compared to what the states at the top of the lists are doing.
California and New York generally score the highest among gun-control advocates. California, especially, is known for its strict assault-weapon ban that is even tougher than the national ban that expired in 2004. The state licenses all gun sellers, restricts high-capacity magazines and requires a background check for every transaction. Those are common laws in states with gun control, but some Californians are considering going one step further, Van Houten said: A group of activists are trying to pass a law that would require individuals acquire a permit before they can buy ammunition, not just firearms.
“Those are a number of steps that are doable and they are important,” he said.
Joan Peterson, a Minnesotan who sits on the Brady Campaign board of directors, said there a number of states with laws she hopes to see enacted in Minnesota. New York joins California in closing the background check loophole, and it also has a robust law compelling citizens to report lost and stolen guns. Connecticut, the site of last week’s school shooting, has a two-week waiting period for people looking to buy rifles or shotguns, the longest in the country. (Minnesota has a seven-day waiting period for hand guns and assault weapons.)
Peterson said any concerns over the legality of state gun-control laws are misguided considering what other states have implemented.
“Other states have done plenty,” she said. “States are perfectly capable of passing their own gun laws.”
Van Houten said all these state laws are considered permissible under current Second Amendment interpretation. But advocates for tougher gun-control laws say the policy debate within states like Minnesota would be null if federal lawmakers were to move forward with gun control of their own.
But absent federal legislation, “It’s incumbent on the states to fill in those gaps,” Van Houten said.
Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry