{"id":33597,"date":"2024-10-18T03:57:43","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T08:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=33597"},"modified":"2024-10-31T22:30:04","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T03:30:04","slug":"new-mexico-governor-wont-renew-ban-on-carrying-firearms-in-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=33597","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico governor won&#8217;t renew ban on carrying firearms in public"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she will not renew a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.governor.state.nm.us\/2024\/10\/16\/public-health-order-on-firearms-expires-key-components-of-order-will-remain-under-mous\/\">public health order<\/a>&nbsp;that temporarily banned carrying firearms in public parks and playgrounds in Albuquerque, the state&#8217;s largest city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Lujan Grisham, who was unavailable for comment Thursday, said in the news release, \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">State Senate Republican leader Greg Baca said Thursday that he did not support the order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cFrom the onset, the governor\u2019s action was unconstitutional and an easy distraction to keep from curbing the crime epidemic gripping our state,\u201d Baca said in a statement. \u201cUnfortunately, the feckless shell of the original order stood for over a year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis is a win for gun owners,\u201d said Dudley Brown, the association&#8217;s president. \u201cThis is a quiet way to admit her plan didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen, a Democrat who&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/politics-news\/new-mexico-governor-grishams-gun-ban-draws-bipartisan-backlash-rcna104500\">decided not to enforce<\/a>&nbsp;the ban because he believed it was unconstitutional, could not be reached for comment Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Allen said last year: \u201cThis order will not do anything to curb gun violence other than punish law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense. It\u2019s unconstitutional. So there\u2019s no way we could enforce that order.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Lujan Grisham issued the temporary order,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.governor.state.nm.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/090823-PHO-guns-and-drug-abuse.pdf\">originally a 30-day ban<\/a>, in September 2023 after an 11-year-old boy was shot and killed in an Albuquerque park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">State Attorney General Ra\u00fal Torrez, a Democrat,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/politics-news\/new-mexico-attorney-general-wont-defend-governors-gun-ban-rcna104771\">wrote in a letter<\/a>&nbsp;last year that he opposed Lujan Grisham\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSimply 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,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/new-mexico-governor-wont-renew-ban-carrying-firearms-public-rcna175980\">Nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she will not renew a&nbsp;public health order&nbsp;that temporarily banned carrying firearms in public parks and playgrounds in Albuquerque, the state&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":33598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[1506,25690,4959,5031],"class_list":["post-33597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-governor","tag-gun-ban","tag-new-mexico","tag-public-places"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33599,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33597\/revisions\/33599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}