As part of a 15-city coalition, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter unveiled a proposal to ban assault-style weapons during a mayoral debate at Minnesota Public Radio headquarters. Speaking alongside his challengers, State Rep. Kaohly Her and biophysicist Yan Chen, Carter announced the plan in the wake of last August’s mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church.
“We are going to go first,” Carter said. “We’re passing four measures in St. Paul, and other cities are following.”
The proposed measures include banning the public possession of assault-style weapons, outlawing devices that convert firearms into automatic weapons, prohibiting guns in libraries and recreation centers, and requiring all firearms to have serial numbers.
Carter acknowledged the ordinances would likely face legal challenges due to Minnesota state law, which prohibits cities from enacting their own gun regulations. Still, he argued that the city must act.
“Gun violence in St. Paul is down 70%. We’re fighting it on every front,” Carter said. “It would be asinine for us to say we’re not willing to fight it in the courts.”
“We’ve been working very closely with our city attorney and with the Gun Violence Reduction Center at the University of Minnesota to make sure these laws are written precisely in ways that we can defend in court,” he added.
Carter called on the state legislature to support Governor Tim Walz’s call for a special session. “I would love to see our legislature [and] more of our legislative leaders back the governor’s call for a special session,” Carter said. “We’ve got to be willing to do something different.”
Rep. Her sharply criticized the proposal, calling it symbolic and legally doomed. “To proactively pass ordinances, or to pass ordinances that you know will be legally challenged, which means you are using tax dollars to fight something just to make a stand, to say that you’ve done something, that’s super performative,” Her said.
“That does not actually move the needle, knowing that you cannot do that because state law preempts you from doing it. Use people’s tax dollars to fight the fight that has to be fought, but don’t create new fights that will generate a ton of cost for city residents,” she continued.
She also pushed back on Carter’s call for a special session. “Only the legislature can adjourn a special session. Without agreement from the GOP, we could get stuck debating rollbacks on reproductive rights,” she said. “You need to understand the legislative process and work with us, not around us.”
Biophysicist Yan Chen questioned the political feasibility of the mayor’s plan, citing the failure of Democrats to renew the federal assault weapons ban when they held a supermajority in 2009-2010. The original ban, passed in 1994, expired in 2004. Despite Democratic control of the White House and Congress, efforts to reinstate it stalled, highlighting the uphill battle even at the national level.
“One thing I want to do is never promise somebody I can deliver something and yet cannot fulfill my promises,” Chen said. “If Obama could not pass his legislation, I think we have very little chance as a mayor to do that.”
Her also criticized the Carter administration for ignoring long-standing housing issues. “We could have worked with the state to place rent payments into escrow, forcing landlords like Madison Equities to fix their properties,” she said. Though a proponent of tenant protections, she said rent control policies reduced the city’s competitiveness and limited business growth.
On economic equity, Her said the city had done less under Carter to support minority-owned businesses. “We’ve approved fewer contracts with Black and brown businesses than the previous administration,” she said. “We’re investing less in innovation at the community level.”
The candidates clashed over the proposed $114 million River Balcony project, a riverfront walkway along the Mississippi River. Mayor Carter defended it as a smart investment in infrastructure and quality of life.
Her raised concerns about access, flooding and sustainability, blaming poor communication from the mayor’s office for failed state bonding efforts. Chen dismissed the project entirely, calling it a “shiny” but unsustainable distraction from more urgent issues like crime and downtown safety.
St. Paul uses ranked choice voting, which lets voters rank candidates (1st, 2nd, 3rd). If no one wins a majority of first-choice votes, the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated and their votes reallocated based on next choices, repeating until someone passes 50%.
St. Paul’s city election will be held on November 5.
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