Minnesota's Red Flag Trap: 5 Years, No Pay, No Charges

The 2023 law was the opening move. This is the endgame.

The expansion package currently moving through St. Paul extends Extreme Risk Protection Orders from one year to **five years**, forces judges to hear emergency gun-removal petitions around the clock—nights, weekends, Christmas morning—and guts the provision that required police to reimburse gun owners fair market value for confiscated firearms.

Read that last part again. **They take your legally owned property and they don't owe you a cent.**

The bill also blows open who can file. Under current law, the process runs through chiefs and sheriffs. Under the expansion, any individual officer on the scene can initiate proceedings to strip your Second Amendment rights on the spot—before you face a single criminal charge, before a jury hears one word, before a judge convicts you of anything. Richfield Police Chief Henthorne calls that "expediting the process." Gun owners should call it what it is: the lowest due-process bar in the country.

CBS Minnesota is cheerleading this with a number: 314 petitions filed in 2025. The network frames that as proof the law is "working." But buried in the same data is the number that tells the real story—judges granted those petitions in **96% of cases**.

Ninety-six percent. That is not a rigorous hearing. That is a rubber stamp with a robe on.

The NRA sent a letter to a Senate committee calling this exactly what it is: a "gun confiscation" scheme. The NRA is correct. When the government seizes legally owned firearms on the basis of an allegation—no charge, no conviction, no trial—the word for that is confiscation. There is no softer word that fits.

DFL Rep. Cedrick Frazier of New Hope claims the law has "saved many lives." He has not pointed to a single documented case. That is not a policy argument. **That is a fundraising line dressed up as legislation.**

Here is the number that should terrify every gun owner outside Minnesota: the expansion has already picked up enough Republican support to clear committee in a tied House. Some GOP members in St. Paul are either not hearing from their constituents—or they've decided not to listen. Both possibilities are unacceptable.

The original law passed on a straight party-line vote. This expansion should die the same way. It won't unless the phones ring.

**The bottom line:** Minnesota's gun-control machine ran two years of rubber-stamp confiscations, called it a success, and is now using that manufactured track record to justify making the whole apparatus faster, broader, and virtually permanent. Five-year orders. 24/7 filings. Beat cops as petitioners. No compensation for seized property. No criminal conviction required.

Every blue-state legislature in the country is watching St. Paul right now. This is the blueprint.

**What you do right now:** If you are in Minnesota, your State House rep and State Senator are at leg.mn.gov. Call today—not tomorrow, today. Demand a no vote. The NRA is already on record in opposition. Make sure your elected officials know their constituents are too—because the gun-grabbers in St. Paul are counting on your silence.