“No more! No more!” was one of the phrases chanted by over 200 people at the Minnesota Capitol after a school shooter opened fire at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis last week.
The shooter injured 23 people, mostly children, and killed an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old.
Students Demand Action and Minnesota Teen Activists organized the event one day after the shooting, according to Aalyiah Murray, the founder of Minnesota Teen Activists.
The rally called for Gov. Tim Walz to hold a special session on banning assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and implementing a violence intervention state office.
Timberlyn Mazeikis, one of the organizers at Students Demand Action and a University of Minnesota graduate student, said the issue hits close to home. Mazeikis survived a previous school shooting at Michigan State University.
“When I transferred here, I hoped for a fresh start, just to be a student again, to heal and to feel safe. Instead, that hope has been shattered,” Mazeikis said.
Mazeikis hopes the protest will show leaders in the Minnesota legislature that young people care about this issue.
“I’m here to call on our leaders to take action and to stop standing in the background when these things happen,” Mazeikis said.
At the protest, Chaplain Howard Doston said he was at the Annunciation School during the shooting. He said the issue around gun control should be bipartisan.
“We need a bipartisan solution because those guns don’t know red or blue,” Doston said. “I have seen too many mothers’ tears. No more of this.”
Jamierre Davis and Jatyus Beasley, who go to DeLaSalle High School and Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, respectively, said they both came out to show their support for the protest.
Both Davis and Beasley heard about the shooting on the news.
Davis, who started his freshman year of high school two weeks ago, said he wanted to speak out after he saw his friends, who were former students at Annunciation, break down in tears.
Beasley said the recent school shootings make him feel a sense of worry that is always in the back of his mind. He said he would like the government to have stricter background checks.
“It’s just a feeling of concern, like, can this happen again? What school will it be? Can it be my school?” Beasley said. “It is just really scary.”
Davis said he wants to ban 18-year-olds or 20-year-olds from owning guns.
“I feel like, as a young person having a gun, it’s always gonna end up bad,” Davis said.
Many speakers at the rally said they believe that mental health should be a priority, but speakers like Jose Perez, the co-founder of youth-led organization Good Trouble, said assault rifles were at the heart of the problem.
“This is absolutely a split-screen crisis where we must both have America face its weird relationship with guns and our youth’s mental health crisis,” Perez said.
Walz announced Tuesday morning he would call a special session for lawmakers to vote on the gun control package, according to the Minnesota Reformer.
Rep. Dave Pinto (DFL) said at the rally that while Minnesota should invest in more mental health services, the state should still ban assault weapons.
“Do we need to invest more in mental health? Sure, but ultimately we need to get to the fact it’s about guns,” Pinto said.
Minnesota currently has background checks, legal concealed carry and a ban on bump stocks, according to Everytown Research.
Some Minnesota Republicans have different opinions on how to solve school shootings.
The Minnesota Gun Caucus argued that banning assault rifles would not solve the problem.
“Instead of treating this as a political football in an election year, we should pursue steps that research shows are effective: strengthening mental health resources, broadening community support systems, providing schools with discreet layered security, and denying perpetrators the notoriety they seek,” The Minnesota Gun Caucus said in a statement to the Daily.
Students Demand Action and Minnesota Teen Activists will have a school walkout this Friday, according to Murray.
Mazeikis said while she was grateful for the number of people who showed up at the rally today, she wished it were not under these tragic circumstances.
“I think it has made our community really come together, which is a beautiful thing, but this shouldn’t have to happen,” Mazeikis said.
Sin Sear
Sep 17, 2025 at 12:16 pm
Could you be more reductive, Mr Hammer?
Jack Hammer
Sep 14, 2025 at 10:46 pm
Forks and plates aren’t blamed for obesity, so why blame guns for violence?
@jay
Sep 14, 2025 at 8:50 am
You’re wrong about so many things. Just sit out the next few rounds.
jay
Sep 11, 2025 at 11:14 am
100% right Steve! Mental issues are the problem for sure, not the guns.
KJ
Sep 9, 2025 at 1:44 pm
It’s sadly no surprise that transphobes immediately and shamelessly use this kind of tragedy to spread their hate and fearmongering. They ignore the clear reality: the shooter was obsessed with mass shootings, idolized past killers, and just like countless perpetrators before, had dangerously easy access to an arsenal of firearms. That’s the common thread across these horrific events, not gender identity.
But instead of facing the real problem, America’s uniquely reckless relationship with guns, these voices twist the narrative to scapegoat transgender people. They conveniently ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of mass shooters are cisgender, white men. And that fact is never framed as a societal crisis. “From January 2013 to the present, of the more than 5,700 mass shootings in America (defined as four or more victims shot and killed), five shooters were confirmed as transgender,” said Mark Bryant, founding executive director of the Gun Violence Archive.
Gun access, not trans people, is the glaring problem. In most other countries, people wrestle with mental health struggles, anger, and isolation too, but they don’t have 400 million guns floating around for anyone determined enough to pick up. That’s why this epidemic is uniquely American. Until we start addressing that reality and regulating firearms, limiting access to weapons of war, and investing in real community safety, nothing will change.
Meanwhile, transgender people, who make up less than 2% of the U.S. population, remain four times more likely to be victims of crime. They’re not the threat, they’re among the most targeted and vulnerable. The focus should be on keeping communities safe, not weaponizing tragedies to justify hate.
Steve
Sep 4, 2025 at 12:18 pm
The problem is the way society promotes LGBTQ as every thing they push is not true!!! We are what we are born as, Man or Women. Keep promoting this insanity that you can change your sex and this will continue with or without guns. Guns are not the problem people!!!
TQuick
Sep 3, 2025 at 10:43 am
Mental Health is the issue thats what needs to be addressed. Guns don’t shoot on their own. No matter the gun laws those that use them to do harm will get them somewhere.