Minnesota state senators recall Annunciation shooting as omnibus firearms bill passes

ST. PAUL, Minn. (OSV News) — The Minnesota Senate on May 4 voted 34-33 in favor of an omnibus firearms bill that introduced a series of efforts aimed at combating gun violence.

Referenced by many legislators amid the debate of SF4067 on the Senate floor was the Aug. 27, 2025, shooting during an all-school Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis.

Before debate on the omnibus bill began, legislators held a moment of silence for 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski, who died in the shooting.

Annunciation families in floor session

Sen. Zaynab Mohamed of Minneapolis, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and an author of the bill, said in introductory remarks that members of Annunciation families were present as the floor session unfolded.

“It is through their strength, faith, humanity and love for their children that got each other through impossible pain and got this historic, powerful legislation to where it is today,” Mohamed suggested.

Mohamed said the bill would ban the sales of semiautomatic military-style assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, invest in safety upgrades for public and private schools, invest in mental health access for children in Minnesota, and reenact a binary trigger ban, among other efforts.

‘Complex problem without single solution’

“This is a complex problem without a single solution,” Mohamed said in her introductory remarks. “The students and parents we have heard from do not want us to choose between banning weapons of war and investing in school safety. This isn’t either-or. We need both. When it comes to keeping kids safe, the only responsible choice is all of the above.”

The nearly four-hour portion of the May 4 floor session on the topic included emotional responses from legislators as well as debate regarding the bill’s proposed language.

Republican Sen. Andrew Lang, a critic of the bill, argued: “This is legislation that goes far beyond the public safety and strikes directly at the constitutional freedoms of law-abiding Minnesotans.”

Question of constitutional rights

“The bill raises a simple but profound question … are we here to protect constitutional rights or are we here to erode them when it becomes politically inconvenient?” He added, “This bill targets law-abiding citizens, not the criminals. Criminals do not follow gun laws. They do not register firearms. They do not comply with bans. What this legislation does is it places new burdens on the people that have done nothing wrong.”

Other critics argued the debate had taken a partisan turn. Republican Sen. Julia Coleman said, “The timing of the vote today feels performative at best,” she said, in part, and suggested the bill as it stood would not have a chance of passing the Minnesota House.

Reflecting on Aug. 27, she argued, “When I look at this bill before us today, I ask myself the most important question before us: Would anything in it have stopped the horrors of that day? My heart breaks that the answer is no.”

Republican Sen. Mark Johnson, the minority leader of the Senate, agreed in his criticism of the bill.

‘Need to keep guns out of hands of violent criminals’

“(W)hat we’re here to do, is to help make this a better society, day in and day out as we show up to work. There’s one problem with that. This bill doesn’t do that. This bill will not be saving lives because this bill does not have a chance of going forward as it is currently written. … We need to be focusing on helping schools enhance their site safety … we need to keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals, and we need to increase access to the mental health services that Minnesota does have, but we need to have more provided for that.”

Other legislators focused on the ways in which they felt the bill could prevent future harm.

“We’re part of this generation that had to worry about mass school shootings. We had to do the drills in school, we grew up through Columbine, through Sandy Hook, through Parkland, through Uvalde,” said Sen. Clare Oumou Verbeten, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. “It’s unspeakable,” she said of what Annunciation parents experienced Aug. 27 and in the shooting’s aftermath. “And we can prevent that.”

Packet of letters from Annunciation students

Sen. Erin Maye Quade, also with the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, read aloud portions of a packet of letters from Annunciation students, their families, and family of staff that legislators had received.

“Aug. 27 wasn’t a one-day event; we are still struggling and recovering months after the worst days of our lives. … Why do we allow weapons this destructive to tear apart our communities? … We can act for the children who are still here and ensure that others never have to experience this. … I am a seventh grader at Annunciation. As a school shooting survivor, I want it to be harder to get assault weapons. … I’m a fifth grader. … Aug. 27 was the scariest day of my life, and I don’t want it to happen to anyone else. I hope you will listen to my friends and me, to keep us safe, so no one has to go through what we went through.”

“This is the most heartbreaking packet of letters I have ever received in my entire life,” Maye Quade said. “We can’t do nothing.”

‘Prevention, intervention, hard reduction’

“When we met with the Annunciation parents last week, they asked us to think about three things: prevention, intervention and harm reduction. And this proposal covers all of those,” said Sen. Erin Murphy, the majority leader of the Senate.

The focus on this topic in the Legislature now shifts to the Minnesota House, where some similar measures have failed, on party-line votes, to move forward.

In an April 30 letter to Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders, Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis expressed hope “you can come together … and transcend the historical ideological divisions around matters such as guns and school safety.”

“We need to make our children and our communities safer this year; we should not cynically wait for a future election in the chance that one’s preferred legislative proposals might triumph,” he wrote in a letter published by the Minnesota Catholic Conference, which represents the public policy interests of the state’s Catholic bishops.

The archbishop outlined the bills “my brother bishops of the Minnesota Catholic Conference” think represent an “‘all-of-the-above’ approach to offer better protection to kids in Minnesota schools.”

Rebecca Omastiak is the news editor at The Catholic Spirit, newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. This story was originally published by The Catholic Spirit and distributed through a partnership with OSV News.

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