A group of college and high school students in Minnesota is pushing for a gun control measure aimed at reducing the number of firearms stolen from vehicles.
This comes after the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis earlier this year. The group is working with state legislators on legislation that would ostensibly promote gun safety, according to The Minnesota Daily.
The University of Minnesota and high school students are working together with the state legislature to target legal loopholes to improve gun safety in Minnesota schools.
Jenny Wen, a student at Columbia University, is part of a student-led policy group working with state Rep. Julie Greene (DFL), to draft a new gun safety bill for the upcoming legislative session.
“This isn’t about taking away anyone’s guns,” Wen said. “It’s about addressing the reality of gun theft, accidental access and impulsive violence.”
The bill would establish uniform requirements for securely storing firearms in vehicles parked on all school property.
It also extends those requirements to Minnesota State High School League-sanctioned events and removes a provision allowing principals to give individuals permission to carry firearms inside school facilities.
Fourth-year Matthew Smeaton said he remembers sitting on a school bus years ago when a tree branch scraped across the windows. A friend jumped, thinking it was gunfire.
“That always stuck out to me just because of how ridiculous it is that we have to live in a world where that’s a concern kids have,” Smeaton said.
Wen explained that state law prohibits firearms at school events. However, people can carry firearms if they get permission from the principal. She argued that “there’s no legitimate reason someone needs to bring a gun to a school football game” and that “Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean it’s safe.”
She noted that the bill they are working on will punish people whose guns are stolen and then used in a violent crime.
Between 2019 and 2023, almost 1.1 million firearms were reported stolen. This breaks down to about 200,000 each year, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
The Council on Criminal Justice revealed that by 2022, about 40 percent of reported gun theft incidents involved thieves stealing the firearms from vehicles. Only about 14 percent involved burglaries.
However, only about 10 percent of stolen firearms are used to commit crimes. Among those using firearms for nefarious purposes, 43.2 percent bought their weapon from an underground dealer. Moreover, about 20 percent obtained the firearm for the specific purpose of committing a crime. It’s also worth pointing out that 85.9 percent of those who possessed a firearm when they committed a crime obtained it from someone other than a licensed dealer.
These kids likely mean well. They are probably too young and uneducated to understand the problems with this bill — and gun control in general.
Yes, we definitely want to prevent people from stealing firearms. But blaming a victim of gun theft for a shooting or homicide unfairly criminalizes people. Moreover, it’s not going to save lives because criminals don’t follow the law.
If an armed individual strolls onto a college campuses with intention to harm people, they already know they are breaking the law. Students and faculty on these facilities who obey the law will be sitting ducks. We have seen this happen over and over again with school shootings and other types of mass gun violence.
Nobody wants to see people gunned down at a football game. But a more effective way to prevent this would be to use other security measures such as cameras, metal detectors, armed security, and other methods. Simply passing a law mandating that people lock up their guns a certain way isn’t going to cut it.
It’s also worth noting that if a student or faculty member has to leave their firearms in their vehicle, they are granting a significant advantage to would-be mass shooters. This is not going to keep anyone safe. In fact, it’s yet another example of how gun control makes people more vulnerable to bad actors. If these students want to prevent gun crime, they should focus on how to stop criminals rather than making it harder for responsible people to defend themselves.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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