New Mexico’s governor decided to try unilateral gun control and was smacked down by the courts and even lacked the support of many in her same party. One would imagine the legislature there would be less than thrilled with her antics and would consider that when looking at her legislative agenda for 2024.
Yet, unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to have happened.
Instead of trying to restrain the now notoriously anti-gun governor, it seems lawmakers there are tripping over themselves to give her pretty much everything she wants.
The latest move? The state Senate passing a seven-day waiting period for gun sales.
Both chambers of the New Mexico Legislature have voted in favor of a seven-day waiting period for all gun sales, though they still need to work out some differences before the proposal can be sent to the governor’s desk.
The New Mexico Senate on Saturday night voted 23-18 to pass House Bill 129, which would require a gun seller to wait seven days after the purchase to deliver a gun to the buyer.
The bill passed the House of Representatives on Feb. 2 in a 37-33 vote. Since the Senate amended the bill, it must return to the House so they can agree to the changes before it can go to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to be signed into law.
HB 129 is sponsored by Reps. Andrea Romero (D-Santa Fe), Dayan Hochman-Vigil (D-Albuquerque) and Cristina Parajón (D-Albuquerque). Sens. Linda M. Lopez (D-Albuquerque) and Joseph Cervantes (D-Las Cruces) are sponsors in the other chamber.
Proponents point to mass shootings in the U.S. committed with guns bought a week earlier, and say waiting periods have been shown to reduce gun homicides and suicides.
I honestly don’t believe these people think anything through.
While a small handful of people may have bought a gun and used it in some wrongful manner within a week of the purchase, it’s insane to believe that if you simply create a waiting period, it won’t be accounted for.
That’s especially true with mass shooters.
These aren’t generally spur-of-the-moment things, for example. They plan these things out. A waiting period will likely be accounted for.
As for suicides, while there are studies that claim waiting periods have an impact, they impact gun suicides. To my knowledge, there really aren’t any showing that people don’t try to kill themselves if they can’t get a gun right away. It would seem that if they can’t get a firearm, they’d just use another method for taking their own life.
So where does that leave us with waiting periods? It leaves us looking at the law-abiding, responsible citizen who wants a gun for self-defense, but now is told they must remain vulnerable for at least a week.
A right delayed is a right denied, and New Mexico’s problems won’t be solved by this. They’re not eat up with mass shootings by most definitions of the term. They don’t have a Uvalde or Parkland per week or anything of the sort and while suicides might be a factor there, it’s not going to be solved with gun control.
No, the issues there are criminals with guns, but since they’re not getting those from gun stores, this won’t have any impact.
But Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, for all her pontificating, doesn’t actually care about that. She just cares about disarming law-abiding people. After all, she admitted her executive order wouldn’t stop criminals from carrying guns, just the law-abiding, and she did it anyway.
This is not a woman who respects the Second Amendment and it’s clear the legislature doesn’t either.
