Not So Fast Karen: Federal Judge Blocks New Mexico Governor's "Health Emergency" To Suspend Gun Rights
Not So Fast Karen: Federal Judge Blocks New Mexico Governor's "Health Emergency" To Suspend Gun Rights | ZeroHedge
Has the trial balloon just popped?
A federal judge in Albuquerque has
blocked part of New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham's 'public health emergency' to disarm law abiding citizens who wish to carry firearms either open or concealed in public.
The ruling comes after both the state AG and various other officials said they'd refuse to enforce it,
AP reports.
The ruling Wednesday by U.S. District Judge David Urias marks a setback for Democratic New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham as she responds to several recent shootings that took the lives of children, including an 11-year-old boy as he left a minor league baseball game in Albuquerque. -AP
The order has been slammed on both sides of the aisle, as even gun-grabbing Democrats like Ted Lieu called it unconstitutional, and far-left rag
Slate says it's "
already backfiring."
Lawsuits have been filed, calls for impeachment have been sounded,
and now, famed 2nd Amendment author and economist John R. Lott Jr. has chimed in with a dose of sanity.
As he writes in
RealClear Wire:
After several road rage cases claimed the lives of children this summer, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham
suspended the open and concealed carry of firearms in Albuquerque and throughout Bernalillo County for the next 30 days. Grisham’s response will not make New Mexicans safer. Indeed, the opposite is true.
None of the attacks that Grisham can point to involved permit holders. That’s not too surprising – permit holders in New Mexico and the rest of the country are exceptionally law-abiding. In 2021, there was just
one revocation for every 45,000 permit holders in New Mexico. Nor was that an outlier. In
2019 and
2020, there were no revocations.
For criminals, it is already illegal to carry guns.
All Grisham’s edict does is make it illegal for law-abiding citizens to carry.
Academic research shows that police are the most important factor in reducing crime. However, the police understand that they virtually always arrive at the crime scene after the crime occurs, as one recent road rage incident illustrates. At the end of August, a law-abiding citizen with a permit
used his gun to protect himself from a road rage attack near Isleta Pueblo, New Mexico.
The Albuquerque police department
doesn’t have enough officers to answer every call for help. Police Chief Harold Medina
acknowledges that Albuquerque ranks at the bottom of cities in police officers per capita. And by the
end of 2021, Albuquerque had only 70% of the number of police officers
that it should have. When the police cannot protect people, the solution is not to disarm law-abiding citizens.
Albuquerque’s murder rate has soared by 70% while Grisham has been governor. But
instead of addressing the problems created by Democrats’ attitudes toward law enforcement, Grisham blames the crime surge on law-abiding gun owners.