Annunciation shooting: Doctors in Minnesota call for gun ban, special session

ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - Minnesota doctors are calling for lawmakers to move forward with a special session to pass legislation aimed at regulating firearms and reducing gun violence in the state after the Annunciation Church and School mass shooting.

The full news conference can be viewed above. 

Minnesota doctors push for assault weapon ban 

What they're saying:

Members of the Minnesota Medical Association, including doctors who treated the Annunciation mass shooting victims, spoke about the suffering they witnessed while trying to save lives.

Doctor Trish Valusek was the pediatric trauma surgeon on duty at Children's Minnesota when the first Annunciation mass shooting victims arrived at the hospital. 

"I was just finishing rounds with my team when I received a trauma alert stating we were receiving a 10-year-old with a gunshot wound to the head," Doctor Valusek said. "I have unfortunately cared for many children with gunshot wounds. It is rare for school-aged children to be shot in the head at 8:30 in the morning on a school day. So I had a gut feeling we would be dealing with a multi-casualty event."

Doctor Valusek continued, saying, "In the whirlwind of Aug. 27, there are a few things that remain vibrant and crystal clear in my brain. They're what still wake me up at 3 a.m. The looks of absolute terror on the faces of the children we received in a wave in shock and bleeding without their parents to comfort them. And then the second wave of terrified, panicked parents not knowing if their child was even there or had survived." 

 During the news conference, the doctors called for the following:

• A statewide ban on assault-style weapons
• A statewide ban on high-capacity magazines
• A statewide requirement that firearms be stored locked, unloaded and separate from ammunition
• The removal of the current prohibition on local municipalities enacting stricter firearm regulations than the state

"This is no longer a friendly request from your local doctor," President of the Minnesota Medical Association Doctor Lisa Matson said. "This is a demand from the tens of thousands of physicians across the state who know firearm violence for what it is; a public health crisis."

GOP focus on school safety, mental health

The other side:

As a signal of their priorities, GOP officials released a statement on Tuesday saying that during a special session their party would favorably consider bills related to improving school and student safety, improving mental health access and funding, and improving public safety.

Noticeably absent in the proposal, however, was any mention of furthered gun restrictions for Minnesotans.

"It's become clear to everyone what should have been obvious from the start, that the governor's talk of a special session has been a partisan political stunt from the beginning," said House Floor Leader Rep. Harry Niska on Tuesday. "He has not been interested in finding bipartisan solutions to the problem of school safety, the problem with public safety, the problem in mental health, but has instead been trying to demand something that's really frankly bizarre in the history of special sessions in Minnesota… He's really just interested in trying to politicize a really horrible tragedy, and that is really unfortunate for the state."

While saying that DFL lawmakers "wouldn't give certain bills hearings" when they had a trifecta in the Minnesota Legislature, but now want to "fast-track" those bills through without releasing their language prior to a special session, GOP House Leader Rep. Lisa Demuth said Gov. Walz could be better served prioritizing efforts of the session on fraud instead.

Both Demuth and Niska suggested that without bills being written for lawmakers to discuss prior to a special session, calling one amounts to an act of "political posturing" by Gov. Walz.

"What the governor is asking for is that we just pass bills that A, haven't been written yet, and B, have never had committee hearings, and skip past the entire legislative process, ignore the voice of all the other legislators, all of their districts, and just skip straight to the end based on demands that he's making to leadership," said Rep. Niska on Tuesday. "That's never been the way we govern in Minnesota."