AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
The High Points:
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Minnesota AAG John Zwier proposes mandatory visible trigger locks on all public firearms.
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His plan burdens lawful gun owners while admitting criminals ignore gun laws.
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The proposal misunderstands how firearms function and why people carry them.
Only in Minnesota politics could someone look at Gov. Tim Walz and Keith Ellison’s already-disastrous gun policies and say, “Let’s get even dumber.” Yet here comes Assistant Attorney General John Zwier, sprinting into the spotlight with a proposal so unserious it almost feels like satire. His plan? Force every gun carried in public — concealed, open, holstered, anything — to wear a dangling trigger lock like some kind of firearm chastity belt. It’s pure political theater.
Zwier admits criminals already ignore gun laws. But instead of cracking down on the criminals, he wants to punish the people who follow the law — the only group that would comply. Worse, a locked firearm is functionally useless for self-defense, which is probably the point. His comparison to seatbelts only proves he doesn’t understand guns, holsters, or the basic concept of concealed carry.
This isn’t policy. This is performance activism. Minnesota deserves far better than another grandstanding bureaucrat inventing solutions to problems he doesn’t understand.
From Bearing Arms:
Minnesota gun owners already have to survive under Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison — a political tag team that treats the Second Amendment the way a cat treats a Christmas tree. But now comes Assistant Attorney General John Zwier, who apparently looked at the state’s anti-gun bench and said, “Hold my kombucha.”
Zwier is planning to run for a seat in the Minnesota House — in a deep-blue district, of course, where “gun control” is considered a personality trait — and he’s clearly looking for a flashy way to launch his campaign. Unfortunately for him, the big idea he’s pitching is one of the dumbest gun-control proposals I’ve seen in more than twenty years of covering the issue. And I’ve seen some catastrophically bad ones.
Before we get to the newest entry in the Bad Ideas Hall of Fame, let’s start with something Zwier wrote in a recent column for the St. Paul Pioneer Press — an argument so confused it could only have been assembled by someone who thinks a firearm is just a Roomba with anger issues.
Zwier actually argued that “we give firearms rights.” As in, not people. The guns. According to him, a firearm used in a crime can only be confiscated if the gun is proven — by a preponderance of the evidence — to have been “involved in or used in” a violation of certain laws. But if a criminal has additional firearms that weren’t used in the crime, law enforcement can’t just scoop those up. Zwier thinks this means “evil gets a free ride.”
Let’s pause here, because apparently this needs to be said slowly: firearms do not have rights. Guns are objects. They don’t testify. They don’t vote. They don’t get a lawyer. They also don’t get “free rides,” because — and this is important — they don’t go anywhere on their own. If someone commits a DUI, we don’t take their car to the crusher. If someone commits vehicular manslaughter, we don’t ban Toyota Camrys. The object is not the problem. The person is.
Shockingly, Zwier does acknowledge that criminals can easily and illegally get guns despite Minnesota’s already thick stack of gun-control laws. Most people would draw the obvious conclusion: time to crack down harder on violent offenders. But Zwier? No, no. He’s here to unveil what he clearly believes is a groundbreaking solution.
And it is… something.
Zwier wants every firearm in public — concealed, open-carried, holstered, you name it — to have a visible trigger lock. Like a padlock dangling off the side of the gun. He compares it to seat belts, because nothing says “deep understanding of firearms” like comparing them to minivans.
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