To the editor:

The Second Amendment states: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger, nominated by Richard Nixon, once said, “The gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American people by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Most hunters don’t need or want an assault weapon. Large capacity magazines are not needed for hunting.

Assault weapons were designed for military and police if needed.

2025 brought 408 mass shootings, resulting in 428 deaths and 1898 injuries.

We need to reinstate the assault weapons ban, limit magazine capacity, ban ghost guns, improve background checks, and waiting periods, gun registration, more gun training, etc.

The assault weapon ban of 1994 did bring down deaths. When it was allowed to expire in 2004 there was an almost immediate steep rise in mass shootings.

The recent murders, and they were murders of Rachel Goode and Alex Pretti, are atrocious. ICE and Border Patrol are sadly not a well-regulated militia. Many of them are just plain thugs.

Trump didn’t feel Pretti should have a gun at protest. It was a legal gun in his own neighborhood. Yet Trump not only supported Kyle Rittenhouse who came from IL to WI with an assault rifle and shot three people, two fatally he invited that murderer to Mar-A-Lago. Talk about hypocrisy that is it.

I hear some Democratic representatives agreeing with common sense gun legislation yet stating they live in an area of hunters, so they need to vote against such laws. Most hunters I have talked with agree they do not need assault rifles for hunting. These legislators need to grow backbones and do what majority of Minnesotans want.

Enough is enough.

Darlene Nelson

New Ulm