New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she will not renew a public health order that temporarily banned carrying firearms in public parks and playgrounds in Albuquerque, the state’s largest city.
The temporary order, which went into effect in September 2023, was intended to slow gun violence in the metro area, but high-ranking state officials, gun advocates and members of her own Democratic Party widely viewed it as a violation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The order drew lawsuits from national gun rights and advocacy groups, which forced her to narrow its scope from applying to public places throughout Bernalillo County to applying to parks and playgrounds in Albuquerque.
Lujan Grisham said in a news release Wednesday that more than 1,700 firearms were collected in gun buybacks over the past year because of the order. She also said it had reduced the number of gunfire incidents in the area, but she did not cite any numbers.
Lujan Grisham, who was unavailable for comment Thursday, said in the news release, “The public health order, though temporary, allowed us to implement urgent and necessary measures that have had a measurable, positive effect on public safety in our state.”
State Senate Republican leader Greg Baca said Thursday that he did not support the order.
“From the onset, the governor’s action was unconstitutional and an easy distraction to keep from curbing the crime epidemic gripping our state,” Baca said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the feckless shell of the original order stood for over a year.”
The National Association for Gun Rights filed a lawsuit against the action last year; it was dismissed after Lujan Grisham scaled back and modified her policy.
“This is a win for gun owners,” said Dudley Brown, the association’s president. “This is a quiet way to admit her plan didn’t work.”
Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen, a Democrat who decided not to enforce the ban because he believed it was unconstitutional, could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Allen said last year: “This order will not do anything to curb gun violence other than punish law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense. It’s unconstitutional. So there’s no way we could enforce that order.”
Lujan Grisham issued the temporary order, originally a 30-day ban, in September 2023 after an 11-year-old boy was shot and killed in an Albuquerque park.
In addition to restricting firearms in public parks and playgrounds in Bernalillo County, it strengthened oversight of firearm sales and implemented wastewater testing for fentanyl in public schools.
State Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, wrote in a letter last year that he opposed Lujan Grisham’s decision.
“Simply put, I do not believe that the Emergency Order will have any meaningful impact on public safety but, more importantly, I do not believe it passes constitutional muster,” he wrote.
