Lisa Demuth Gun Safety Lies Minnesota

The Parents of a Girl Killed at Annunciation Say Lisa Demuth Told Them She Wouldn't Block a Vote on an Assault-Weapons Ban. Then She Blocked It.

Mike Moyski and Jackie Flavin say House Speaker Lisa Demuth sat in their living room after their 10-year-old daughter Harper was killed at Annunciation Catholic Church and promised not to block a floor vote on an assault-weapons ban. When the Senate passed one, she kept it off the House floor — and later bragged to GOP activists that she 'led the effort to stop Democrats from taking our guns.'

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 24, 2026

The Parents of a Girl Killed at Annunciation Say Lisa Demuth Told Them She Wouldn't Block a Vote on an Assault-Weapons Ban. Then She Blocked It. — Photo: Carlos Gonzalez/The Minnesota Star Tribune

In August 2025, a gunman opened fire at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. He killed two children — 10-year-old Harper Moyski and 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel — and wounded dozens of other people.

Afterward, Harper's parents, Mike Moyski and Jackie Flavin, invited Lisa Demuth into their home. Demuth is the Republican speaker of the Minnesota House, and now the Republican nominee for governor.

They asked her one thing, they recalled on October 22: if a bill banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines came to the House, would she let it come up for a vote? According to the parents, Demuth told them she would not block it.

"I think she lied to us in our living room," Moyski said this week, the Minnesota Star Tribune reports. "Intentionally? I don't know. But then continued to lie as we called it out."

What happened to the bill

Months after that meeting, the Minnesota Senate passed a gun-safety package. It banned assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, expanded safe-storage rules for guns, and paid for more school security and mental health care.

The package went to the House, which is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Demuth would not bring it to the floor.

We've reported before on how that fight played out — Democratic lawmakers held a days-long sit-in and hundreds of people packed the Capitol demanding a floor vote. The bill never got one.

Flavin told the Star Tribune that, based on her talks with lawmakers from both parties, she believes the Senate bill would have passed the House if Demuth had let it come up.

Demuth's defense — and what she told her own party

At the October 21 debate with Democrat Amy Klobuchar, Demuth said she kept her word:

"I said bills will be introduced, they will go through the process and they will be voted on. That happened eight times. I held to my word."

The next day her spokesperson put the number at seven. Either way, those were votes in House committees on separate bills — some of which had already failed there — not a floor vote on the package the Senate passed. Moyski made exactly that point: the bills that failed in House committees were not the same as the package that passed the Senate. "So, yes, absolutely a lie as it pertains to that bill that finally passed the Senate."

And when Demuth was talking to Republican activists rather than grieving parents, she didn't describe herself as someone who had simply let the process play out. At the state GOP convention earlier this year, she bragged that she "led the effort to stop Democrats from taking our guns." Her convention flyer said the same thing, alongside a promise that she "fights and wins for the MAGA agenda."

So to the family, it was "the process." To the convention, it was a win she led.

"I don't"

Flavin described a second meeting with Demuth, about six months after the first one in their living room. Flavin had one question: what could Demuth do to make Minnesota safer?

"We sat there in the longest moment of silence, forever, waiting for her to have an answer, until someone said, 'Well, do you have an answer?' And she said, 'I don't.'"

Demuth's school-shooting plan, as she has described it, centers on more mental-health resources and extending state school-security money to private schools. Her spokesperson called the Annunciation shooting a "horrendous tragedy."

The Minneapolis TV station FOX 9, carried the parents' account in their own words. "She told that she wouldn't block it," Flavin said.

The facts, in short

Harper Moyski's parents say Lisa Demuth promised them, in their own home after their daughter was killed at Annunciation, that she would not block a floor vote on an assault-weapons ban. When the Senate passed one, Demuth kept it off the House floor, then told Republican activists she "led the effort to stop Democrats from taking our guns." Her defense — that some gun bills got votes in committee — is not the floor vote the parents asked her for.