Editorial Board: Among Melissa Hortman’s missions — in tragic irony — were gun safety and reform

Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Minnesota Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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Melissa Hortman — who along with her husband, Mark, was shot and killed Saturday by an armed intruder — spent her legislative career trying to make Minnesota safer. Both as a member of the Legislature and speaker of the House, Hortman was a persistent advocate for stronger gun laws, not in the abstract but as a direct response to the toll of gun violence in communities across the state.

We know this well because Hortman occasionally amplified her voice in the Opinion pages of the Minnesota Star Tribune.

She pressed for background checks on all gun sales. She championed red flag laws to temporarily remove guns from people deemed dangerous. She sought new restrictions on firearm modifications and increased penalties for illegal gun purchases.

And she got results: Under her leadership, Minnesota passed some of its most significant gun-safety laws in a generation.

But on Saturday, the kind of tragedy she spent years working to prevent struck in her own home. The Hortmans were killed in what state and federal authorities have labeled an assassination. We don’t know all the details, but another Minnesota legislative family that was targeted in the same manner only half an hour earlier but survived — Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette — were hit by nine and eight bullets, respectively, according to Yvette.

In her public statements and writing, Hortman returned often to one central truth — that “Minnesotans deserve to be safe at school, at work, at home and in their communities,” as she wrote at the end of the 2023 session in a commentary co-authored with the Sen. Kari Dziedzic. (Dziedzic died of cancer in late 2024. If you’ve not yet seen it, please read Editorial Board member Rochelle Olson’s June 15 column on their legacy as leaders.)

“After more than a decade of heartbreak from gun violence, DFLers passed commonsense measures like criminal background checks and red flag laws to keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them. These laws will save lives in Minnesota,” the legislators wrote.

Hortman was relentless on multiple priority issues, not just guns, but guns in particular because she was convinced government could — and must — do better. That conviction drove her to push through resistance, year after year. She was relentless not because it was politically expedient — it often wasn’t — but because she believed that government had a responsibility to advance public safety.

Following the killing of three first responders in Burnsville in February 2024, she led efforts to increase penalties for straw purchases and ban dangerous firearm modifications like binary triggers. In her final bylined article on our pages, in October 2024 in advance of the election, she called for more measures, including safe-storage requirements and mandatory reporting of lost or stolen firearms.

None of this was theoretical to Hortman. She fought with conviction because she believed the effort would save lives.

Hortman’s slaying reverberates nationally and is a grim illustration of the escalated risks now facing public officials in the United States. In a briefing held after news of the attack broke, U.S. Capitol Police and Senate security officials told lawmakers that threats against elected officials have surged. Last year, Capitol Police investigated nearly 9,500 direct threats or “concerning statements” toward members of Congress — more than double the number recorded in 2017.

The irony of Hortman’s death is beyond cruel. Her slaying, and the killing of her husband, is a staggering loss — not only to her family and friends, but to the very cause she so vigorously advanced. It is a sobering reminder that the stakes in the gun safety debate are not abstract. They are immediate, personal and, in this case, fatal.

But Hortman’s legacy is intact. It is one of action in the face of inaction, principle in the face of political resistance. She didn’t simply speak about the need for safer communities — she worked to build them. The tragedy that took her life must not eclipse the work she did to make our communities safer. If anything, it reinforces the urgency.