More than a year ago, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham made serious waves by issuing a “public health order” that barred the lawful carry of firearms in Albuquerque.
To say it stirred up a firestorm is to put it mildly. Even many anti-gunners took issue with it as going too far.
Grisham eventually was forced to pull back her blanket restrictions and just limit it to public parks in the city, but that was still an issue. Challenges to her authority to do any such thing are underway, which makes the timing of her latest move interesting.
She allowed the order to lapse.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Wednesday that she has ended an emergency public health order that suspended the right to carry guns at public parks and playgrounds in New Mexico’s largest metro area.
The original public health order in September 2023 ignited a furor of public protests, prompted Republican calls for the governor’s impeachment and widened divisions among top Democratic officials. It also sought to strengthen oversight of firearms sales and monitor illicit drug use at public schools through the testing of wastewater – before expiring on Saturday without renewal.
“I have decided to allow the public health order to expire, but our fight to protect New Mexico communities from the dangers posed by guns and illegal drugs will continue,” Lujan Grisham said.
She described strides toward reducing gun violence through gun buy-back programs, increased arrests, the distribution of free gun-storage locks and a larger inmate population at a county detention facility in Albuquerque.
Grisham says more than 1,700 guns were collected via buybacks, though I can promise that virtually none of them would have ever been used in a crime otherwise.
It’s fascinating that she opted to do this now, well after the court cases have proceeded. Is she trying to make the case moot? Standing can evaporate in a situation like this, which would force the judge to throw out the case unless it’s determined that the damage was already done.
Yet if standing does disappear, that means there won’t be a ruling on the legality of this sort of thing. That leaves the door open for someone to do it again down the road.
It’s also possible that this was some kind of effort to help Kamala Harris win in November.
She’s been trying to position herself as someone who will defend gun rights even as she advocates for gun control. Yet her silence on what Grisham pulled has been rather telling, in my opinion. Grisham may have worried that her order might be used to discredit Harris’s stance.
Then again, I’m doubtful about that since guns are playing a relatively minor role in this campaign for some reason.
Either way, the New Mexico “experiment” is over and I don’t see a shred of evidence that this order did anything except make life a pain in the butt for law-abiding citizens. A few folks might have gotten cited–I can’t seem to find any records of just how many–but as it was a civil penalty, it’s unlikely to have served as much of a deterrent except for those inclined to follow the rules.
The fact that it was permitted to go on this long was a travesty, but at least that nonsense is over.
