Minnesota Governor's Race Turns to Guns as Parents of Slain Schoolgirl Publicly Fault Demuth
Minnesota's governor's race has entered its final stretch with gun legislation a central point of contention. On October 22, at a campaign event for Democratic candidate Amy Klobuchar, Jackie Flavin and Mike Moyski — parents of a 10-year-old girl killed in last year's Annunciation school shooting — publicly faulted Republican candidate and state House Speaker Lisa Demuth.
The couple said that after the shooting they met with state lawmakers to push for what they call meaningful gun control legislation, and that Demuth told them she would not block a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines from reaching a full floor vote. But after the bill passed the state Senate and arrived in the House, they said, Demuth never scheduled it for a vote. "We asked if she could support a vote or let the bill pass, and she said she wouldn't block it. But as we all know now, she did block it," Flevin said. Moyski said Demuth "lied to us in our own living room."
The night before, October 21, Klobuchar and Demuth held the race's only televised debate, where Klobuchar also raised the matter, making it one of the debate's sharpest exchanges. Demuth's campaign responded in an October 22 statement calling the Annunciation shooting a tragedy in the state's history and noting that Demuth's own child was on the Rocori High School campus during a 2003 shooting there. The statement said Demuth had supported parts of the parents' agenda in seven related votes this session, including mobile crisis funding and requiring all schools to set up anonymous threat reporting systems, and backs school safety funding for all students, including those in private schools.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：明尼苏达州议会大厦。摄影：McGhiever，CC BY-SA 4.0（Wikimedia Commons）。Photo: The Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul. Photo by McGhiever, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons).
