In his first rally as Kamala Harris’ candidate on Tuesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz invoked an issue at the forefront of many Americans’ minds: the right “for our children to be free to go to school without having to worry about being shot to death in their classrooms.”
But Walz wasn’t always a staunch defender of gun violence. The development of the vice presidential candidate, who once received an A rating from the NRA, shows the growing importance of Gen Z voters. Having grown up in the midst of a mass shooting in the United States, they are enthusiastic supporters of Harris.
“Gun violence is the number one killer of our generation, so we can’t afford anything less than leaders who prioritize basic gun safety,” Timberlyn Mazeikis, a gun violence survivor and volunteer director of Students Demand Action of Minnesota, said in a release. Everytown gun safety, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action issued a joint statement in support of Walz yesterday.
Related: Tim Walz’s Cheat Sheet: 10 Things You Need to Know About Harris’ VP Pick
Elected to the US House of Representatives in 2007, Walz was long beloved by gun rights advocates. The National Rifle Association supported and donated to his campaigns, giving him an A rating. In 2016, Guns & Ammo magazine included him in the Top 20 Politicians for Gun Owners.
It wasn’t terribly surprising. Walz represented a rural, red district in Minnesota and had grown up in a time and place where guns were popular for hunting — not mass shootings.
“I grew up in a small town, [so] I put my shotgun in my car or at school or in the football locker to go pheasant hunting afterward,” he told Pod Save America last month. “But we weren’t shot at school.”
That all changed after the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, he has said.
In a 2018 video by March for Our Lives co-founder and Parkland survivor David Hogg, which was re-shared on X last month, Walz says his then-teenage daughter, Hope, approached him in the days after the shooting: “Dad, you’re the only person I know who’s elected in office you have to stop what’s happening to this.”
“For me, it was both a reckoning and a shame,” she told Pod Save America magazine, recalling that the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School would have been her son’s age.
Two weeks later, when Walz was campaigning for governor, he wrote an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune calling the NRA “the single biggest obstacle to taking the most basic measures to prevent gun violence in America.” He went on to say that he had matched the $18,000 the organization had given to his previous campaigns and would not accept any future donations from the NRA. He stated that he was in the process of supporting a ban on “bump stocks” and expressed his support for a ban on assault weapons.
As governor of Minnesota, Walz has signed wide-ranging gun safety measures, most notably the 2023 Act, which includes universal background checks and a “red flag law” (which allows state officials to temporarily confiscate firearms from someone a court has determined may be wrong). dangerous to oneself or others).
This year, Walz urged Minnesota lawmakers to go even further, asking them to support measures that would require safe storage of firearms, better reporting of lost and stolen guns, and tougher penalties for “straw purchasers” (those who buy firearms for others who can’t). . own them legally). Since then, he has signed legislation that bans automatic weapon conversion devices and collects data on gun crimes.
Walz is still an avid hunter – something he has highlighted in previous campaigns and makes him an everyman.
“There is a vision to reduce gun violence without hurting those who legally own guns and to use them for things that many of us value,” he told reporters in Bloomington, Minnesota, last week.
Gun safety advocates have already backed his candidacy, including the Gun Violence Prevention Organization, founded by former congresswoman and gun violence survivor Gabby Giffords (who joined Walz in Minnesota in 2023 signing universal background checks into law).
“As governor, Tim did what others called the impossible, passing Minnesota’s background checks and extreme risk laws with a slim majority on gun safety,” Giffords said. “It wasn’t easy, but he got it done with hard work and effective leadership. His work as governor has saved lives, and I know that will continue when he is vice president.”
Harris’ campaign, which has already received major support from Gen Z voters and gun violence prevention advocates, has called for an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and red flag laws. Last month, the NRA called him an “existential threat to the Second Amendment.”
That doesn’t seem to bother Walz. “I received an A rating from the NRA. Now I get straight Fs, he tweeted last month. “And I sleep just fine.”
