MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota state Senate has approved a sweeping violence prevention bill taken up after a violent year that saw the shooting deaths of two Minneapolis schoolchildren and the assassination of House DFL Leader Melissa Hortman and her husband.

The wide-ranging bill includes a ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, expanded requirements for the safe storage of firearms, and more funding for school security and mental health care.

“Today is really, really historic,” said Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, a long-time advocate of gun control legislation at the Capitol. “It stands on the work of the legislators that came before us.”

The bill cleared the Democratically controlled Senate by a single vote, 34 to 33, with all Democrats voting for the bill and all Republicans voting against. It also marks a rare bright spot for DFL Gov. Tim Walz, who threw his energy into violence prevention efforts after the shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in August, only to see Republicans rebuff him and his influence wane in his administration’s final year.

Republicans will also almost certainly block the measure’s most controversial provisions in the tied House, where they control the speaker’s gavel. Even attempts to address less contentious policy points, like school security and mental health care, have stalled in the House.

“I’m very excited today that there’s some really good work being done around gun safety,” Walz told reporters this morning before the vote. “But I’m also a realist.”

A spokeswoman for GOP House Speaker Lisa Demuth did not immediately provide comment on the Senate bill’s passage. Demuth has previously expressed skepticism about the gun control measures pushed by Democrats.

“This is not going to bring these kids back and that’s all these families want,” she told the Minnesota Star Tribune last month.

Democrats held a trifecta in 2023 and 2024 but did not pass any gun control measures as sweeping as the ones that cleared the Senate on Monday. That was before the Hortman assassination in June 2025 and the Annunciation shooting a few months later, said bill sponsor Sen. Zaynab Mohamed, DFL-Minneapolis.

“I think that changed a lot of hearts and minds,” she said.

Just a month after the Annunciation shooting, Mohamed and Latz convened legislative working groups to vet policy ideas, and at the urging of Annunciation families, worked toward a comprehensive bill that wrapped in support for mental health care, school safety and gun control.

It wasn’t clear, though, that all 34 Senate Democrats would support the bill as several moderate members deflected questions from reporters through the fall about their stances on assault-style weapons.

They eventually did, though, with moderate members like Sens. Judy Seeberger, Grant Hauschild, and Rob Kupec, voting in support.

Republicans, likewise, remained uniformly opposed. Several argued in a four-hour floor debate that the bill was likely unconstitutional, would do little to prevent violence and represented a wasted opportunity because they believe the bill will die in the House.

“We’re committed to finding bipartisan solutions to help improve things, like school safety,” said Republican Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson. “We need to be focused on solutions, not on slogans.”

The bill that was born out of a heinous attack on a Catholic church was sponsored by a Muslim woman — Mohamed — and a Jewish man — Latz. Asked what role their beliefs played as they worked on the bill in recent months, the pair both cited faith in a higher power.

“I think about what would God want me to do,” Mohamed said. “I think today, God would want me to make sure I do everything in my power to keep the kids safe.”

Latz, who chairs the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, scheduled Mohamed’s bill hearings after sundown during Ramadan so she could eat beforehand, she said. Latz cited the Jewish concept of tikkun olam — Hebrew for “repairing the world” — as motivating his work.

“For me this is just one more piece of trying to make the world, the community around me a better place,” Latz said.

Mike Moyski, father of one of the two children killed at Annunciation, told reporters after the vote that his faith has been tested since his daughter Harper’s death but that it felt strong on Monday. He also took issue with Republicans’ repeated assertions of their “God-given rights” to bear arms.

“It’s also a God-given right for a 9-year-old and a 10-year-old to live beyond that age,” he said.

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(Allison Kite of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.)

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