Minnesota's $880 million public safety package is moving on to Gov. Walz after it passed in the state House of Representatives early Tuesday morning following eight hours of floor debate.
The governor has said he will sign the bill when it comes to his desk.
"As a veteran, gun-owner, hunter, and dad, I know that basic gun safety isn’t a threat to the Second Amendment," Walz posted on social media. "It’s about our first responsibility to our kids: Keeping them safe."
The biggest issues were two gun safety measures that were added to the bill in conference committee last week.
One of those provisions require universal background checks for handgun sales.
The other enacts new laws on extreme-risk protection orders that allows the courts to take away firearms from a person found to pose a significant danger to themselves or others.
“We have extremely important investments in public safety,” said DFL Rep. Kelly Moller. “This bill has transformational and historic investments that cover everything from violence prevention to rehabilitation to everything in between.”
While Democrats are touting how the bill makes Minnesota safer, Republicans are still fuming about what they feel was a one-sided effort to tack on the gun safety items by a conference committee that included only Democratic lawmakers.
“This is pretty arrogant work," said Rep. Anne Neu Brindley. "This is very one-sided work. It is work that chose to shut out 48% of Minnesotans’ viewpoints.”
Gov. Walz has made gun safety a top priority in his second term in office.
The bill sets aside $3.6 billion in the 2024-25 biennium to fund the Department of Public Safety, Department of Corrections, Minnesota courts, civil legal services, Guardian ad Litem Board, Tax Court, Uniform Laws Commission, Board on Judicial Standards, Board of Public Defense, Human Rights Department, and Peace Officers Standards and Training Board.
Here are some of the highlights of the measure, according to the Minnesota House of Representatives website.
-Expands the right for a free public defender to cases where a person appeals a district court’s decision on a child protection case.
-Simplifies how victims of identity theft or mistaken identity can expunge court records to clear their names.
-Prohibits peace officers from joining or supporting hate or extremist groups.
-Requires places of public accommodation to provide closed-captioned television when a television is available.
-Allows lawsuits seeking damages to continue after the person suing has died.
-Creates a carjacking crime and establishing penalties.
-Prohibits law enforcement agencies from retaliating against, or penalizing a peace officer who intercedes against or reports another officer or employee use of excessive force.
-Creates a crime of organized retail theft.
-Prohibits the state and counties from using private prisons.
-Restricts strip searches of detained juveniles.
-Establishes a supervised release board to review the cases of minors sentenced to mandatory life in prison.
-Establishes the Office of Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls.
-Expands the crime of an assault motivated by bias to include bias against a person due to the person’s gender, gender identity, or gender expression.
-Changes the first-degree possession offense to equate the possession of fentanyl with the possession of heroin.
-Requires the state, instead of counties, to pay for medical examination costs for criminal sexual conduct victims.
-Requires carbon monoxide alarms in hotel rooms.
-Grants early conditional release to inmates who make sufficient progress toward rehabilitation.
-Establishes a Clemency Review Commission and modifying Board of Pardons’ operations.
The entire bill can be found here.
The measure passed 69-63, with all but one Democrat voting in favor.
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