Some parents whose children were wounded in the recent deadly school shooting in Minnesota are demanding greater gun safety measures as the divided legislature gets ready to debate the state’s response this week.
Mothers and fathers have gone public to highlight the acute suffering being endured by their children in the aftermath of last month’s attack by a shooter that killed two children and injured 17 others while they were at prayer at the Annunciation Catholic school, traumatizing the community in south Minneapolis.
In powerful testimony, Malia Kimbrell, whose nine-year old daughter Vivian St Clair is recovering from two gunshots in the back and one in the arm, addressed lawmakers, saying that she will “settle for nothing less” than an immediate ban on semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines.
“I will get the names of any lawmakers who stand in the way of that happening and I will invite you to come to my living room and insist that you hold Vivian’s hand while we do her dressing changes each night and she cries the entire time,” Kimbrell said.
“You can look her in the eye while you cleanse her bullet wounds, and you can tell her to her face why you are opposed to keeping her safe. Why a semi-automatic rifle is more valuable than her life,” she said. She added: “To our lawmakers and people in power: who the hell is going to do something? Are you courageous or are you a coward? Do you care about our kids? Don’t tell us the answer, show us. Prove it.”
Kimbrell’s speech at the medical center where she works and which treated her daughter came a day after US vice-president JD Vance met families of the victims. Among the families who met Vance were the parents of 12-year old Lydia Kaiser, who underwent brain surgery to remove bullet fragments.
In a letter addressed to Vance, Lydia’s father Harry Kaiser said: “On just this one issue of gun violence, will you please promise me, as a father and a Catholic, that you will earnestly support the study of what is wrong with our culture, that we are the country that has the worst mass shooter problem?”
Kaiser added: “Will you please promise to pursue, despite powerful lobbies, some commonsense, bipartisan legislation as a starting point, so we can come out of our corners and find the values that we share so that this time, some progress is made. Thoughts and prayers haven’t been enough.”
Similarly, Brittany Haeg, mother of six-year-old David Haeg, who was shot, urged lawmakers to enact stricter gun control as she described her son’s ordeal of suffering from a torn spleen and head grazes due to multiple gunshot wounds.
“He gets upset, sad, clingy … and also just mad,” she said, adding: “I hope that Minnesota lawmakers make change … Minnesota has a fair number of laws related to gun control and regulation, and it’s good that states are doing that work, but without national change, there are limits to what an individual state can do to solve this problem.”
Minnesota’s Democratic governor Tim Walz is calling a special session on gun legislation and will propose a “very comprehensive” package on gun control.
“I’m going to need some Republicans to break with the orthodoxy and say that we need to do something on guns,” he said.
Yet the state legislature remains divided, with Republicans focused on improving school safety and mental health resources, while many Democrats push for stricter gun regulations.
Kimbrell acknowledged that many hunt or have permits to carry concealed firearms and said “that’s not what I’m talking about”, instead asking lawmakers to stop military-style rifles for the general public.
Minnesota’s House Republicans have released a school safety agenda that focuses on safety measures in school and more mental health treatment not gun control.
Minnesota’s Republican House speaker Lisa Demuth sent a statement to the Guardian that said: “If [Walz] decides to call a special session, anything that we do needs to have bipartisan support…If governor Walz and Democrats are focused on partisan accusations and demands, this special [legislative] session will not be productive for the people of Minnesota.”
Republican state representative Elliot Engen said in a telephone interview: “What we’re trying to do for them is give a real, tangible security upgrade for every school in the state so that we don’t have to wonder if the worst case scenario were to occur.
“If this just gets politicized as a 100% gun debate, it’s a sad, missed opportunity for real leadership.”
In contrast, Democrats support assault weapons restrictions.
“I fully support a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in our state, as do the majority of Minnesotans… It’s my hope that our Republican colleagues would join us to pass meaningful reforms that strike at the heart of this problem – the availability of and access to military-grade weapons of war that belong nowhere near our communities,” state senator and DFL member Liz Bolden said in an emailed statement.
Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers are defending trans communities following reports that the shooter had changed their name and gender to female five years ago.
DFL representative David Gottfried said: “Sadly some of my Republican colleagues are using this tragedy as an opportunity to attack our transgender neighbors. That is as misguided as it is hateful, compounding the invasive actions being taken by the Trump administration … This is the lowest, most shameful form of politics and I wholeheartedly condemn it.”
Similarly, DFL representative Leigh Finke, who was the first transgender person elected to the state legislature, said: “This is a problem of internet extremism and radicalization, just like gun violence, these are not transgender problems. These are American problems.”
Such criticisms came amid recent reports that the Trump administration is exploring banning transgender Americans from possessing firearms.
And in June, Minnesota Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman was killed and a state senator wounded by a gunman with a list of political targets.
Additional reporting by Anna Betts
