In the early morning hours of June 14, 2025, a gunman disguised as a police officer assassinated Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, and wounded State Senator John Hoffman and his wife in their home in nearby Champlin. The shootings sparked the largest manhunt in Minnesota’s history, and authorities caught the suspected gunman crawling through a wooded area outside Minneapolis yesterday afternoon.
According to authorities, the suspect allegedly wore a “hyper-realistic silicon mask,” a badge, and body armor, and was armed with a 9mm Beretta 92 pistol, when he shot and wounded the Hoffmans. He then traveled to two other homes of state lawmakers, one of which was not home, before he stopped at the Hortman residence. There, he exchanged gunfire with police before fleeing — and leaving behind the mask, body armor, Beretta, and three magazines.
When police searched the SUV that the suspect abandoned at the scene, they found ammunition, “at least three AK-47 assault rifles, a 9mm handgun, as well as a list of names and addresses of other public officials.” Police said that the suspect’s list of 70 targets included politicians, civic and business leaders, and Planned Parenthood centers.
The suspect was listed as the “purchaser for at least four of the recovered firearms.”
armed extremists
No other information about the firearms has been released as of this writing. While the suspect may have only fired the Beretta, it’s clear that he intended to carry out a much larger attack with the AK-47s — military-style semi-automatic rifles designed for rapid-fire barrages.
Extremists have chosen similar military-style rifles to carry out politically motivated attacks in recent years. In July 2024, a gunman fired a DPMS AR-15 at President Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, killing one attendee and wounding two others. Weeks later, in September, Secret Service agents apprehended a man who allegedly aimed an SKS rifle equipped with a high-capacity magazine at Trump while he was golfing in West Palm Beach, Florida.
In June 2017, a gunman fired at least 70 rounds from a Century Arms SKS rifle and Smith & Wesson M&P pistol at people practicing for the Congressional Baseball Game in Alexandria, Virginia, wounding U.S. Representative Steve Scalise, two Capitol Police officers, and two others.
The shootings in Minnesota are also similar to a January 2011 mass shooting where a man fired a Glock 19 — emptying a 33-round magazine in 19 seconds — at an event held for U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords at a Safeway grocery store in Tucson, Arizona, killing six people and seriously wounding Giffords and 12 others.
MASS sHOOTINGS WITH BERETTA PISTOLS AND AKs
Beretta pistols and semi-automatic AK-47s have been used in several high-profile mass shootings over the years, but the latter have led to significantly more casualties since they were first imported into the U.S. in 1982. In January 1989, a gunman used a Chinese AK-47 to kill five children and wound another 30, as well as one teacher, at the Cleveland Elementary schoolyard in Stockton, California. The gunman fired 106 shots in three minutes.
In the aftermath of that shooting, California enacted the first assault weapons ban in the United States, which banned several makes and models by name, and President George H.W. Bush imposed an import ban on AK-47s and other foreign assault weapons as part of the Gun Control Act. The measure did not stop American gun makers from assembling AK-47s from imported parts kits, however.
In September 1989, a disgruntled employee used several firearms, including a Chinese AK-47, to kill eight of his former coworkers and wound another 12 at a printing company in Louisville, Kentucky. And in June 1994, another gunman used a Chinese AK-47 to kill four people and wound another 23 at Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington in roughly five minutes.
More recently, in July 2019, a gunman armed with a Century Arms AK-47 and a “target list” killed three people and wounded 17 others at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California. Weeks later, a gunman killed 23 people and wounded 22 more at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, using another Century Arms AK-47. The perpetrators of these racially motivated attacks were both considered domestic terrorists.
Despite these incidents and countless others, the gun industry continues to manufacture and sell firearms that use high-capacity magazines, particularly assault weapons, to civilians.