Edina City Council hosted a special meeting on Jan. 6 to discuss a newly drafted ordinance that would tighten gun control within the city. The city heard from Edina residents and Edina High School students and staff providing testimony on whether the ordinance should pass locally, even though it would remain ineffective until the existing state law is repealed.
The current Minnesota statute prevents local governments from passing ordinances stricter or different from state law, meaning that regulating types of firearms is not allowed. To ensure that the statute is not broken, Edina City Attorney David Kendall implemented a series of resolutions that would be passed if the statute is changed, dictating exactly what Edina is allowed to regulate regarding firearms.
The event received a full chamber of visitors, with nearly 40 testimonies from Twin Cities residents. Five of these testimonies were from EHS staff and students, featuring Stephen Sanger, Joy Dunna, and students Gabriella Olson, Eliza Erlin, and Mia Kapoor.
Both teachers who testified were not official representatives of Edina Public Schools, either speaking from their experiences teaching or as a resident.
“An enormous amount has changed over my 25-year career, both in education and society,” Sanger said. “But one thing that hasn’t changed is the all too frequent news of yet another school shooting.”
Sanger continued the testimony with an email he received from a parent detailing the effects of the false lockdown drill on Dec. 2 on a student, which led them to miss class the next day.
Sophomore Gabriella Olson, a member of Students Demand Action, said that she started to be aware of school shootings and their impacts after the 2022 Uvalde school shooting. Following the Annunciation shooting, Olson became more involved in Students Demand Action and decided to participate in the town hall so she could share her experiences with self-defense and gun violence.
“I think a lot of adults just don’t really know what happens inside schools, the things that we have to learn, the things that we do and we practice and become part of our normalcy,” Olson said.
Sophomore Eliza Erlin joined Students Demand Action last year and has since been a regular participant in gun prevention events.
“And it’s important to remember that these [deaths] aren’t just statistics,” Erlin said. “These are actual human people. And it’s also just terrifying to imagine that happening at your school, and it makes it harder to learn, and it makes it harder to pay attention, and it makes it scary.”
Sanger has had experience with school shootings throughout his entire educational career. Sanger started teaching in 1999, close to Columbine High School, where a school shooting took place that killed 13 students and one teacher. However, he wasn’t as exposed to gun violence as a child and feels there is a sense of misunderstanding regarding school shootings.
“A lot of teachers are very frustrated,” Sanger said. “We think about this a lot. There are a lot of teachers who frankly are scared about this reality, and I think it’s time for society to do something about this absolutely insane situation that we have. This shouldn’t be a normal thing.”
