Minnesota: 5 Years, No Charges, Any Cop Can Take Your Guns

The state's red flag law was already dangerous. Now a bill moving through St. Paul wants to supercharge every mechanism that makes it dangerous.

Here is exactly what passes for "public safety" in Minnesota right now.

**Five years. No conviction. Just a signature.**

Current Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) can already strip a law-abiding citizen of their firearms for up to one year without a criminal charge. This bill extends that to **five years** under certain circumstances. No jury. No trial. One judge, one signature, half a decade of your Second Amendment rights—gone.

**Any cop. Any hour. On the spot.**

Right now, only police chiefs and sheriffs can petition for an ERPO. This bill blows that open to **any officer at any level**, filing paperwork in real time at the scene. That is a patrol officer making a split-second call that could cost you your rights until 2030. And to make sure there is no cooling-off period, the bill requires judges to consider emergency petitions **after business hours and on weekends**. Your guns can be gone before you finish the call to your lawyer.

**96%. Read that number again.**

In 2024, Minnesota courts saw 138 ERPO petitions. In 2025, that number exploded to **314**—more than doubled in a single year. Judges granted those orders **96% of the time.** That is not careful, individualized due-process review. **That is a rubber stamp with a robe on.**

**And they keep your guns for free.**

Current law at least requires police to reimburse seized firearms at fair market value—a financial check, however modest, on departmental overreach. This bill **eliminates that protection entirely.** Your property walks out the door and the department owes you nothing.

Rep. Cedrick Frazier (DFL-New Hope) is carrying the House bill and calls it "legislation that has saved many lives." The gun-control movement has used that line in every state, every session, for decades—assert lives saved, produce no evidence, demand more power.

The NRA did not mince words in its letter to the Senate committee, calling the proposal exactly what it is: a **gun confiscation law**. When 96% of petitions are granted, when any officer can file on the spot, when citizens lose firearms for five years without a single criminal charge—that is not a public safety policy. **That is a mechanism for disarming people the government finds inconvenient.**

The bill already cleared committee in the tied Minnesota House—with some Republican crossover votes. The DFL-controlled Senate is moving fast.

If you are in Minnesota, contact your state representative and senator today at **leg.mn.gov**. Tell them a five-year warrantless seizure on a patrol officer's hunch is not a compromise. It is a civil rights violation.

And if you are not in Minnesota—do not exhale. This exact playbook is already being drafted in other statehouses. The erosion is always incremental, always bipartisan at the edges, and always sold as saving lives. The 2A community stopped it before. It has to happen again.