By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
One of the most popular booths at this year’s Minnesota State Fair bears a simple sign: “Never Walz.”
The booth offers t-shirts and prizes for fairgoers – all emblazoned with the “Never Walz” logo. The line for the booth grows so long at times that it poses traffic problems for police officers patrolling the fairgrounds.
Bryan Strawser, chairman of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, is not surprised by the booth’s popularity. He’s watched Gov. Tim Walz’s career since the vice-president candidate first served in Congress. Walz, Strawser told the Second Amendment Foundation, poses a clear and present danger to the Second Amendment rights of the entire country, should he and Kamala Harris take control of the White House.
“If elected, Walz would become more effective at pushing gun control that any vice president we’ve had in decades, because he can speak the language. He’s a hunter – that part’s not fake. He really does hunt,” Strawser said. “People will perceive him as having more credibility on the issue. Biden and Harris are not gun owners, but he is. He could win some folks over who don’t know any better.”
When Walz served in Congress from 2007 to 2019, he was an A-rated, NRA-endorsed congressman.
“He never voted for any anti-gun legislation, and he even celebrated the Heller decision with us,” Strawser said of the landmark 2008 Supreme Court opinion that said individuals have a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
Everything changed when Walz ran for governor. Another candidate was endorsed by the Democratic Party – known in the state as the Minnesota Democrat-Farmer-Labor party, or DFL. Walz could only run to the left of the DFL-endorsed candidate in the primary, Strawser said, and this included changing his long-held positions on guns.
“He completely flipped,” Strawser said. “Even before the state convention, he came out in favor of red-flag laws, an assault weapon ban, raising the purchase age to 21 and more. As governor, he proposed universal background checks, raising the age to 21, magazine restrictions and a ban on assault weapons.”
Strawser said he and his members have little doubt that if elected, Walz will call for more restrictive gun laws at the national level.
“I think he will push for magazine restrictions, bans on certain rifles, national universal background checks and, if he can get it through, raising the age to 21 for all firearm purchases,” he said.
Strawser warns that Walz is hard to pin down on his positions, but he should not be underestimated. He is a serious politician, and he is known to have a temper.
“Our members think he’s a political chameleon. You cannot trust what he says about the Second Amendment because of how he’s flipped. If you talk to Democratic gun owners like him, they too worry about how far he will go. We have a chapter of liberal gun owners here. They are very disappointed with him. They can’t get him to change his positions, and they can’t figure out why he flipped,” he said. “It’s hard to know what Walz really believes. He was in Congress for 12 years and told constituents he believed in the Second Amendment. Now, he’s on the other end of that equation.”
Based on his actions as Minnesota’s governor, Strawser said it’s not too difficult to determine how Walz would infringe upon the Second Amendment as vice president.
“Walz would have signed any gun-control bill they put in front of him,” he said.
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