Dan Manchon and Mike Roaldi, who both have children who attend Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, weren’t politically active in the past. That changed after Aug. 27, 2025.
Manchon has two daughters, ages 8 and 10, who were in the church that morning, when their classmates, 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski, were killed and 29 others were injured.
He said the parents all felt, “Is there anything we can do to keep this from happening to others?”
Roaldi, who has three kids at Annunciation — the youngest of whom was close friends with Fletcher — told Forum News Service he shied away from politics in the past, even when he had “strong feelings” about it.
“If you’re not gonna stand up and try to do something after you’ve been through something like this, when are you?” he said recently.
Jake and Kris Kelly have a son at Annunciation who’s heading into eighth grade, and Kris said the advocacy has given them “comfort.”
For the Annunciation parents, that advocacy hasn’t been about aligning with one political party or finding one single policy that can prevent the next shooting.
“I think there’s far more middle ground than people think,” Jake Kelly said. “It’s a combination of everything. It’s a combination of mental health … of social media … of continuing red flag laws.”
“Keeping kids safe is not controversial,” he added.
Parents reflect on last legislative session
Manchon, Roaldi and the Kellys are members of the Annunciation Light Alliance, a nonpartisan parents advocacy group that pushed for gun violence prevention measures at the state Capitol last session.
When Manchon met with lawmakers, he recalls a few who prefaced with: “Hey, Dan, you’re not going to change my mind on the Second Amendment.”
“I’m not trying to,” he would respond.
Manchon said that wasn’t their goal; it was more to get lawmakers to “feel” what the Annunciation community had gone through, challenge their thinking, and recognize, “Yeah, we have a problem here.”
He said in his conversations with Republicans and Democrats, everyone seemed to care about protecting kids; the challenge, Manchon said, was reaching “an agreement on what they’re willing to do for it.”
Roaldi said the passionate feelings about issues that could prevent gun violence “don’t necessarily line up neatly with a partisan platform.”
After months of emotionally charged hearings and deliberation, a gun violence prevention package passed the Minnesota Senate but stalled in the House.
While the package ultimately didn’t pass, other measures Annunciation parents advocated for — such as anonymous threat reporting and social media restrictions for minors — did.
“We obviously didn’t get everything we were advocating for, or everything we wanted. But if those two things prevent one mass shooting in the next 10 years, every hour of effort, every conversation, every tear that was shed in testimony, was worth it,” Roaldi said.
Roaldi said he doesn’t think lawmakers were close-minded, rather that they weren’t “solution-oriented.”
“While X or Y may be a legitimate concern, let’s work together to write the bill in a way that overcomes that,” he said. “Don’t just tell me ‘no’ because of that. Let’s talk about what we might be able to change in order to make it more practical.”
Manchon noted that they were able to negotiate on some of the objections to gun control; for example, the limit in the high-capacity magazine measure was changed from 10 rounds to 17.
‘Eyes wide open’
Despite some productive one-on-one conversations and negotiations, Roaldi said he becomes exhausted when “politics gets in the way of people’s conscience.”
“Every one-on-one conversation I had, there was genuine concern and compassion. The influence of external groups and the apparatus of the parties — that is disheartening,” he clarified.
Roaldi said it felt almost “taboo” to tell lawmakers that they might have to take some risks that would hurt their reelection chances.
He said Annunciation parents will always be “eyes wide open” about how politics could get in the way of their efforts.
“We’re always asking ourselves: Will this bill, will this conversation, will this vote get us closer to protecting kids, or will it be used to help elect people? I think that’s a question we’ll always ask, and we obviously want to do the former,” Roaldi said.
Manchon pushed back on the notion of families and victims being used as “pawns of a political game.”
“Nobody came to us and said, ‘Hey, we want you to stand here. We want you to say this or not.’ I think it’s an easy deflection tactic to say that maybe parents or victims are being used to try to pivot away from the core issue that we’re here to talk about, which is protecting kids,” he said.
What lies ahead for next session?
Control of the Legislature and the governor’s office is up for grabs this November.
The Legislature has several key purple seats that could potentially flip, and polling shows both Republicans and Democrats have the potential to be negatively affected in the election by the gun control debate at the Capitol.
House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who’s running for governor, received backlash from advocates for not putting the gun violence prevention package that passed the Senate up for a House vote.
She argued that she didn’t stand in the way, that the bills failed in committee, but others said she had the power as speaker to circumvent the committee process and put the package up on the House floor for a vote.
When she received the endorsement of the National Rifle Association in July, Demuth touted protecting Second Amendment rights and pledged to continue to do so.
Her opponent, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who has supported gun safety laws in the past, said on WCCO on Monday that she would sign gun safety measures.
“As governor, I will, yes, stand up for hunting and angling and outdoor recreation in Minnesota, but I will allow for that vote and I will sign that bill for gun safety,” she said.
It’s not clear whether that could happen, given the uncertain future of the Legislature. Even if there’s a DFL trifecta, there is the potential for new moderate Democrats to be elected who might not support gun control measures.
“Obviously, I’m hoping for us to get a majority in all three branches, but no matter who is in charge, we’re going to do exactly what we’ve been doing,” said Sen. Zaynab Mohamed, DFL-Minneapolis, whose district includes Annunciation. “We’re going to continue to move our feet to push for this legislation.”
DFL Rep. Emma Greenman, who also represents a district Annunciation is in, said she hears from voters about the importance of ensuring that “people can send their kids to school and they can feel confident that they’ll come home,” and that those concerns have only escalated since Operation Metro Surge.
Manchon said the Annunciation parents he knows aren’t focused on elections or aligning with a party, but more so on getting “both sides of a very difficult topic and a very complex issue together to have a conversation … and we’ve done that.”
In any case, the Annunciation parents who Forum News Service spoke to said they’re in it for the long haul. Roaldi said this could potentially be a decades-long fight.
“I don’t think that I’ll ever stop trying to push for that conversation to happen and try to push leaders to live up to their responsibility to these kids,” he said.
