Klobuchar Isn’t Governor Yet. She Already Says Minnesota’s AR-15 Sales Ban ‘Is Going to Get Passed.’

Amy Klobuchar had been Minnesota’s governor-elect for less than a day when a reporter asked her about guns. She didn’t hedge.

“The gun safety bill is going to get passed, and I am so excited to be working with the leaders on this, and it certainly should be one of our top priorities,” she said at her first press conference in St. Paul on Nov. 4.

A week later, that one answer is still the thing Minnesota gun owners can’t stop talking about. And when you read the bill she was talking about, it’s easy to see why.

It’s called SF 4067. It would stop gun stores from selling AR-15s and a long list of other semiautomatic rifles, cap new magazine sales at 17 rounds, and make people who already own those guns register them with the state and renew that paperwork every three years, as Fox News laid out.

The bill that died by one tied House

SF 4067 isn’t new. Democrats in the Minnesota Senate wrote it this spring after the 2025 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis and the murders of former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.

It was introduced on March 2. On May 4 it passed the Senate 34-33, a straight party-line vote with no Republican support. State Sen. Zaynab Mohamed of Minneapolis took over as chief author in late April, alongside Sen. Ron Latz and Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy.

Then it hit the House and stopped. The chamber was split 67-67, and the bill never got a vote.

That tie is gone now. The Nov. 3 election handed Democrats the governor’s office and control of both chambers, and the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus says the new majorities are bigger than the ones that ran the Capitol in 2023 and 2024.

So the one thing that killed the bill last session won’t be there in January.

What it would actually do

Supporters call it a gun safety package, and parts of it are exactly that. It funds mental health services and an anonymous threat-reporting system for schools, tightens storage rules and changes how extreme risk protection orders work.

The fight is over the rest.

Licensed dealers would be barred from selling what the bill calls “semiautomatic military-style assault weapons.” The definition covers rifles, pistols and shotguns based on how they operate and what features they have. In practice that sweeps in the AR-15, the best-selling rifle in America.

Magazines that hold more than 17 rounds would be off the shelves too. That limit doesn’t just hit rifles. Plenty of common handguns ship with magazines that size or bigger.

If you already own one of the covered guns or magazines, you could keep it. But you’d need a “certification of ownership” from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the state’s version of the FBI, and you’d have to renew it every three years.

Skip that step, and knowingly holding an uncertified gun or magazine becomes a gross misdemeanor. Get caught a second time, and it’s a felony.

The bill would also bring back a ban on binary triggers and add limits on homemade guns without serial numbers. Private sales of the covered rifles would still be allowed if certain requirements are met.

Why owners hear the word “registry”

Gun-rights groups say the certification piece is the part that should worry people who never plan to buy another rifle. A list of who owns what, kept by the state and renewed on a clock, is a registry in all but name, they argue. Alpha News called it one of the most significant parts of the bill.

The NRA didn’t soften its read of Klobuchar’s comments.

Gun Owners of America was just as blunt, posting that “they are coming for our guns” and promising to “fight them every step of the way.”

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus said the bill would ban commonly owned rifles and force certification of guns Minnesotans “already lawfully own.” It also pointed out how thin the first win was. The bill cleared the Senate by a single vote.

Klobuchar’s own fine print

Klobuchar didn’t spring this on anyone. Her campaign platform promised she’d sign the Senate package, including its storage rules, assault weapons limits and school security money. The same platform talked up due process and the rights of lawful gun owners.

At the press conference she left a little room. “I think that bill makes a lot of sense,” she said. “I’m sure that we’ll make some changes … but the basics of that bill I hope will remain in place.”

She hasn’t said which changes. Alpha News asked her transition team which parts of the bill she supports and which she doesn’t. The team didn’t answer before the story ran.

She does have a clock running. “There are 61 days before my administration begins,” she told reporters the same day, according to MPR News. Former Human Services Commissioner Cindy Jesson is chairing her 14-member transition team.

The fight moves to January

For Minnesota’s hunters and target shooters, the math has flipped. A year ago, a tied House was enough to stop the bill cold. Next session, opponents will need Democrats to break ranks or the courts to step in.

Gun-rights groups are already treating the 2027 session as the main event. The Gun Owners Caucus has a bill tracker and legislative scorecard up, and the national groups have Klobuchar’s quote on repeat.

The real question is what “some changes” means. If the certification requirement survives, Minnesota would join a small group of states asking owners to report rifles they bought legally. If it doesn’t, Klobuchar gets to say she listened. Either way, she put the bill at the top of her list before she’d even moved her things into the governor’s office.