Another Reason to Never Elect Republicans

The recent mass shooting at an apartment building on the edge of downtown Minneapolis was carried out by a man with both a criminal record and permit to carry the handgun he used.

Aside from the murderous actions he took, it was pretty clear even beforehand that he should not have had that permit. But the Hennepin County Sheriff, Dawonna Witt, signed off on it in April of this year. (Star Tribune gift link with many details on his record here.)

There are three particularly notable things to me in that article. 

First: Up until 2003, Minnesota had one of the most restrictive gun-licensing laws in the country. That year, when our last Republican governor came into office and Republicans controlled one house of the legislature, the current law was passed, essentially requiring county sheriffs to issue permits to anyone who wasn't a felon or had been civilly committed. 

Before the new law, it was an affirmative test, and not many people met it:

When the state Legislature made it easier to carry a gun in public in 2003, there were 12,000 active gun permits in Minnesota.... In March of this year, there were 375,551 active permits in the state, or around 8.5% of the adult population in Minnesota.... [That's a 3100% increase in permits.]

At the start of 2026, there were 49,314 active permits to carry in Hennepin County.

In other words, there are more than four times as many permit-holders in Hennepin County alone, 2026, as there were in the entire state of Minnesota in 2003.

Even under the new law, sheriffs have discretion to deny permits. The story says that a sheriff in a rural county is more likely to know a person who applies, and permits are denied in varying amounts. But the county with the highest number of denials is urban. 

The second notable thing:

Last year, Ramsey County [home to Saint Paul] denied 68 applicants because they were deemed a danger to themselves or the public. No other county in the state denied more than 10. 

Hennepin County denied only five.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher says in the story that he would have denied the shooter's permit, and given his track record on permits, that seems believable. I am about the farthest thing from a Bob Fletcher fan, but I agree with him on this.

The third notable thing:

Last year 5,467 crimes were committed by individuals with a gun permit, the highest number since 2003, though the BCA noted that was still just about 1% of permit holders. 

So much for the pro-gun argument we always hear about legal gun owners never doing anything illegal with their weapons. 

The story does not say how many crimes were committed with a gun, and therefore what percent of all gun crimes were committed by permit-holders. Or how many crimes committed with guns were carried out with weapons stolen from permit-holders — another big problem. There are too many guns out in the world in the first place, and stealing them is a much too easy. And then there's the straw-buyer problem.

I want to thank Republicans for passing that bill back in 2003 (with the help of [probably rural] Senate Democrats). You've made us all so much safer.