(Editor’s Note: The following column was submitted by Rep. Paul Novotny.)

Yesterday night, House Democrats approved the Public Safety and Judiciary Conference Committee Report. The report makes thousands of violent criminals eligible for early release, fails to protect children, infringes on the rights of law-abiding Minnesotans, and fails to give law enforcement the resources they need to keep communities safe.

We have seen the impacts that soft-on-crime policies have had on rising levels of violent crime in Minnesota. House and Senate Democrats are doubling down on these failed policies and making Minnesota less safe by putting violent felons back on the streets and restricting law-abiding Minnesotans ability to defend themselves and their families.

Included in the conference committee report is a provision that allows those convicted of violent crimes including murder, manslaughter, rape, kidnapping, assault, domestic assault to have their prison sentences reduced if they complete Department of Corrections programming.

Additionally, the report contains two controversial gun provisions that fail to address root causes of violent crime, instead creating barriers for law-abiding Minnesotans to exercise their Second Amendment rights. The all-Democrat conference committee gave just 14 minutes notice from when the gun control provisions were posted online to when they were adopted leaving little opportunity for the public to weigh in.

Instead of focusing on issues that address the root causes of violent crime, Democrats slipped two gun control bills into the conference committee report that were negotiated behind closed doors, with zero public input, and with a mere 14 minutes notice before they were adopted. This is no way to govern and especially troubling when these specific provisions have serious civil rights implications.