Gun Rights Group Offers No Endorsement for Governor’s Race

(KNSI) — The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus and Political Action Committee are not endorsing either of the 2022 candidates for governor.

The gun rights group says they endorsed Republican candidate Scott Jensen in 2016 during his run for state senate but say he betrayed the endorsement by co-sponsoring anti-gun legislation after being elected.

According to the group’s website, during the 2016 election, he sought their endorsement by submitting a survey saying he pledged to work with the group and oppose gun control legislation. In 2018, they say he introduced and co-authored one bill supporting universal background checks and another requiring reporting stolen or lost firearms, imposing criminal penalties, and proposing coding for new laws in Minnesota Statutes. They say he removed himself from the universal background checks bill, not the lost and stolen firearms reporting measure.

In 2018, they say Jensen made numerous statements defending the bills following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, including one that seemed to fire back at the group, saying, “Absolutely, I may have changed what I wrote on a form two years ago before I’d ever had a public debate. How many shootings have taken place since then? Am I a person that will try to take in the data and feel the rhythm of life around me and let that influence how I view the world? For sure. I don’t think I betrayed anybody.”

Seventeen people died in that shooting. Seventeen others were hurt.

In 2019, Jensen, who admitted he had a permit to carry, co-authored a stand your ground bill and said he strongly supports the Second Amendment earlier this year.

On their website, it says they are appreciative that as a State Senator, Dr. Jensen “reversed his position on at least one of the two gun control bills that he filed in 2018, but it’s difficult for us to understand his true position on the Second Amendment given his earlier pledges and surveys and his later actions.”

The group doubled down on its decision, saying they stand by their statement at the time of Jensen’s support of gun control as a senator, but he is “no longer eligible for endorsement by our organization. Voters will have to decide whether or not to trust Dr. Jensen with their Second Amendment rights.”

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