Minnesota AR-15 Ban Status: What 2027 Means for an 80 Lower
80 Percent Arms | Nov 10th 2026
An AR-15, magazine, and PMF package cleared the Senate by one vote in May and died when the tied House never reached it. As of November 7, 2026, none of it is law. The election just changed who controls the retry.
Start with the statute book, because that is the only place a ban exists. The chapter 624 section list still runs from 624.7144 straight to 624.715. The sections the 2026 bills would have created — 624.7145, 624.7146, 624.7148 — are not in it. Section 609.667 is still the serial-number statute it was before the session, and section 624.712 as it reads today still defines an assault weapon with the 1993-era list, down to naming the “Colt AR-15 semiautomatic rifle type”, and still exempts a firearm “particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes”.
So the precise answer to the question every builder in the state asked this fall is: no. As of November 7, 2026, Minnesota has no AR-15 ban, no magazine cap, and no serialization requirement for a personally manufactured firearm — a PMF — completed by an adult who may lawfully own one. That sentence will only stay true until the Legislature says otherwise, and the Legislature is about to look different.
What 2026 actually did
The attempt was not one bill. It was at least four, with three different strategies.
The main event was SF 4067, whose own short title was the “Omnibus Firearms Bill”. Five Senate authors filed it — Mohamed, Latz, Pappas, Westlin and Champion — and it reached first reading on March 2, 2026. Amended out of committee, it passed the Senate on third reading on May 4, 2026 by a recorded vote of 34-33. One vote. The Senate’s own record shows what happened next in the House: nothing. No committee report from the House side, no floor vote, no conference. The House’s session-end report has Speaker Lisa Demuth gaveling the session out sine die on May 18, 2026, with the chamber split 67-67 after the 2024 election.
The other vehicles show where the majority’s appetite was while the omnibus lived. HF 3407, introduced February 17, 2026 and referred to House Public Safety Finance and Policy, opened its official description with the sponsors’ own words — “Sale and possession of ghost guns prohibited” — language aimed at PMFs, plus design-file bans, required serial numbers and assembly limits. Per its status record, the last recorded action is co-authors being added two days later. No committee report. No floor vote. SF 4290 was the hard version: its text makes it flatly unlawful “to transfer, own, or possess semiautomatic military-style assault weapons”, caps magazines at “more than ten rounds”, sets penalties at up to five years and a $25,000 fine, and gives existing guns and magazines until February 1, 2027 to be certified, surrendered or removed. The status page shows referral to Senate Judiciary and Public Safety on March 9, 2026, and no further action. It was never heard. HF 5160, another omnibus, was introduced and referred on May 17, 2026 — the day before the session’s last day — and died without a hearing, which is another way of losing without a vote.
The most complete version of the ban, and the only one that reached a floor vote. Five authors, committee amendments in both chambers, and a one-vote Senate pass on May 4. The House side of the record after referral is empty: no report, no special order, no third reading. When the House adjourned May 18, the bill died with it.
The quiet strategy: regulate paperwork instead of banning hardware. The bill’s official description — “Sale and possession of ghost guns prohibited” plus design-file limits, required serial numbers and assembly limits — is the sponsors’ language for rules that land on PMF builders. It gathered co-authors three days in and then stopped: the record shows no committee report and no floor date. A vehicle like this one is how a ban returns without headlines.
The version that made no compromise with grandfathering. Its text makes it unlawful “to transfer, own, or possess semiautomatic military-style assault weapons”, draws the magazine line at “more than ten rounds”, and punishes violations up to five years and $25,000. Existing guns and magazines would have faced a February 1, 2027 deadline to certify, surrender or leave the state. Referred March 9 and never called — but it is the map of where the coalition’s far edge sits.
Filed to set up 2027, not to pass 2026. HF 5160 covered ownership, possession and sale of semiautomatic military-style guns and large-capacity magazines, and hit the desk one day before the gavel. No hearing, no report, no vote — the procedural equivalent of a placeholder. Sponsors who file on the eve of adjournment are telling you where they intend to start next January.
What a revived ban would do to an 80 lower build
Nothing in this list is law today. All of it is drafted, tested and dated.
Use SF 4067 as the template, because it is the version that reached a floor vote. Its second-engrossed text would have taken its serial-number sections effect on August 1, 2026 and its core prohibitions on July 1, 2027. Here is what a builder would have faced:
- The magazine line. A large-capacity magazine would be any feeding device with the capacity to accept “more than 17 rounds” — or any “conversion kit, part, or combination of parts” from which such a device can be assembled, if those parts sit in one person’s possession. Read literally, a shelf of AR-15-pattern parts becomes a legal question about who holds it and when.
- The build cap. A person who is not a federal firearms licensee is “prohibited from assembling or manufacturing more than three firearms in a calendar year.” Before assembly, you would request a serial number through a federal licensee, and the firearm must be imprinted within ten days of the build.
- The tools ban. Manufacture by “computer numerical control milling machine or three-dimensional printer” by a non-licensee would be unlawful, as would selling or distributing computer-aided design files for those guns to anyone in the state outside a license. Each carries up to five years and a $10,000 fine.
- The unfinished frame. Any firearm lacking a serial number engraved in metal — language the text applies to an unfinished frame or receiver — would get 180 days to do one of four things: have a licensee imprint a serial number, remove it from the state, make it permanently inoperable, or surrender it.
- The paperwork regime. Owners of covered guns and magazines would certify with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and “renew the certification of ownership every three years.” Transfers would run only between certified parties, with proof the item was acquired before the ban date.
- The penalties. Violations start as a gross misdemeanor, with a felony tier — three years and $10,000 — for selling combinations of parts into the ban.
SF 4290 is the preview of how far the same coalition could go: possession itself a felony with a $25,000 fine, a ten-round magazine line, and a February 1, 2027 cleanup deadline.
What a revived ban would not change
The 2026 record cuts against hype in both directions.
The four bills were all state vehicles — none was federal legislation, and nothing in the 2026 Minnesota session reaches a builder in Texas, Florida or anywhere else. In Minnesota itself, the current law is not a blank slate: section 624.712 already restricts selling, transferring or bringing into the state listed assault-pattern guns and their frames or receivers, subject to the sporting-purposes exception — a line sellers and buyers argue across daily — and section 624.7181 already makes carrying one of those weapons in a public place a felony for anyone under 21. Those rules bind today, ban package or not.
And the arithmetic that killed the package deserves quoting from the person who ran the Senate. Writing in September 2025, when the House was still tied, Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy conceded that “no bill can pass the House or Senate without GOP votes”. That constraint is why SF 4067 stopped at 34 votes in one chamber and zero in the other. It shrinks after this election. It does not disappear: every 2027 bill still walks the committee-and-floor path the 2026 omnibus stumbled on.
The election, and why the retry looks different
Everything in this section is a projection until the canvass says otherwise.
Voters on November 3 put the DFL on track to hold the House 77-57, kept the Senate 39-28, and left all five constitutional officers in one party’s hands. WCCO’s post-election report has Senator Amy Klobuchar defeating Speaker Demuth for governor, Murphy expected to lead the Senate again, and a new speaker to be chosen when the session convenes in January. In her post-election interview, Murphy said simply: “We need to act on gun violence”.
Label all of that correctly. The seat counts are projections, the governor’s race is a network call, and the House’s own analysis notes results are not official until certified by the state canvassing board, which is scheduled for November 19, 2026. A projected majority is a forecast. The canvass is the record.
The balance sheet: today against 2027
Nothing was signed
- Sections 624.7145, 624.7146 and 624.7148 do not exist; the chapter list jumps from 624.7144 to 624.715.
- Section 609.667 is unchanged — still the pre-2026 serial-number statute.
- Section 624.712 keeps the 1993 list, the named Colt AR-15 entry and the sporting-purposes exception.
- Section 624.7181 binds today: a person under 21 with an assault-pattern gun in a public place is guilty of a felony.
- A PMF completed by an eligible adult today stays unserialized, with no state requirement attached.
The 2027 draft, as passed
- Magazines over 17 rounds are contraband — including kits and combinations of parts.
- Non-licensees capped at three builds a year, with an FFL serial request and a ten-day imprint.
- 3D-print and CNC manufacture without a license: felonies. CAD file distribution: same, five years and $10,000.
- BCA certification of ownership, renewed every three years; transfers only between certified parties.
- Unserialized guns, unfinished frames included, get a 180-day clock: mark, remove, disable or surrender.
- Dates from the 2026 draft: serial sections August 1, 2026; core bans July 1, 2027. A revived bill rewrites both.
Sourceable: every bill action, vote and effective date above from the Revisor of Statutes; the adjournment and the seat projections from the House’s official Session Daily; the leadership signals from attributed statements. Not sourceable: no 2027 bill carries a number yet, because the new session has not convened — the retry will arrive as new files, not a revival of these ones. We attribute nothing to the Attorney General’s office in this article: its 2026 press pages were unreachable when this was written. And no court has ruled on any of these bills, because none became law to rule on.
Our position
We believe a law-abiding adult assembling a firearm for personal use, with no intent to sell, is exercising the same right the Second Amendment’s militia language presupposes. We oppose SF 4067, SF 4290 and HF 3407 returning in any form in 2027, and we think the assembly caps and design-file bans are drafted to reach builders who have never done anything but finish a receiver in their own garage. Say clearly what that is: a position, not a holding. The facts above stand on the legislative record; this paragraph stands on our judgment.
What builders should do before January
- Calendar the canvass. November 19 converts projections into the official record. Until then, every trifecta headline is a forecast.
- Track new numbers from day one. The 2027 session convenes in January and will file its gun package under fresh numbers. Watch the Revisor for serialization, large-capacity magazine, and the sponsors’ own label for it — “Sale and possession of ghost guns prohibited”
- Ask your senators the specific question. Not where they stand on guns, but whether the omnibus returns, whether it grandfathers existing PMFs and magazines, and what the compliance deadline is. Sponsors’ answers before introduction set the shape of the grandfather window.
- Date your own paper. Keep receipts and build records for anything you finish, and read the enrolled text — not the summary — before relying on any exception. Grandfather clauses are won and lost on effective dates.
- Outside Minnesota, act on your own state. Nothing here binds you, and nothing here should: the 2026 Minnesota package is a model other legislatures can copy, so track your own state’s committee calendar, not someone else’s.
We have covered this fight from both ends: Minnesota’s Ghost Gun Crackdown Is Really an Attack on Lawful Builders and Todd Blanche and Robert Cekada on 80 % Lower Receivers and PMFs. And the parts that make the argument possible in the first place are in stock: AR-15 80 lower receivers.
Our AR-15 80 lower receivers ship under today’s rules, which are the ones this article documents. A purchase funds no litigation and changes no legal position; the civic actions above are what move policy. If a 2027 bill passes, dates and paperwork will decide what a finished build means — so buy the time, not just the parts.
Minnesota settled nothing in 2026. It just moved the vote from a tied room to a stacked one.
The ban package died because 67 seats could not clear 67 seats. In January, a projected 77 gets the first swing — and for anyone who builds, owns or ships into the North Star State, that is the only number that matters now. The canvass comes first, on November 19. Watch it, then watch the first Tuesday in January.