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Sanctuary Counties in New Mexico
I am visiting relatives in New Mexico and noticed that the leftist government passed a law requiring background checks on gun sales between individuals.
The governor signed it, of course. A quote shows that she apparently has never read the US Constitution:
And as for the argument that the bill limits constitutional rights, the governor countered: “We all have a constitutional right to be safe in our homes and our communities.”
Remind me, Governor, which amendment was that?
Fortunately, there appears to be a lot of pushback on this. The Republicans in the legislature are talking about overturning the law with a referendum to be put on the ballot in 2020. County governments in the state have come up with a better idea:
Meanwhile, officials in 25 of New Mexico’s 33 counties have adopted “Second Amendment Sanctuary” declarations as of Wednesday, effectively refusing to enforce the new law.
Published in Guns
From the quoted article, “An analysis a decade ago by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives suggested that background check laws can help curb weapons trafficking.”
I guess that’s unless they’re telling FFL dealers not to do background checks in order to put guns in the hands of the cartels.
New Mexico seems populated by a lot of ruffians.
I can say from experience that that is absolutely true.
It’s a beautiful state, and dirt poor. There is nothing south of interstate 10, and not much more going north.
And of course a couple of Albuquerque gang members are going to run a background check when transferring a gun from which the serial number has been filed off.
And how, pray tell, do they propose to enforce this law? If my next door neighbor has a firearm to sell to me, and we complete the transaction in one of our homes, is the Law going to come into our homes and arrest us?
New Mexico’s gotten a huge surge in income over the past two years, thanks to the boom in oil and gas drilling created by fracking and horizontal drilling. Oil and gas-related revenues now make up 30 percent of the state’s budget, a higher percentage than in neighboring Texas …. so naturally, Democrats in the northern part of the state pushed a bill that would put a four year ban on fracking in New Mexico, in an effort to go full-New York and ban it completely.
They are also raising the minimum wage and passed their own “Green New Deal”-abolishing all fossil fuel in the state. Yea, that’s going to work.
While the governor seems to be all-in on that, given how much money she also wants to spend it’s going to be interesting to see if Grisham really is willing to throw away all of the $1.4 billion budget surplus and more the state got in Gov. Martinez’s last year, thanks to fracking in the SE corner of the state (and a tiny bit in the NW region around Farmington).
The north-of-Interstate 40 progressives in the state are totally locked into the mindset of the bi-coastal environmentalists and the more radical ones just to the north in Colorado, and would simply think New Mexico could make up for those lost oil and gas revenues by just raising taxes on evil corporations and greedy billionaires, without ever stopping to think New Mexico has fewer corporations and billionaires than just the Houston metro area, let alone the whole state of Texas. So far there are enough saner heads south of I-40 to keep the frac ban in check, but that could change, depending on the outcome of the 2020 elections.
The current instant background check system is flawed in that not all government agencies participate. It appears the same thing will happen within New Mexico.
The universal background check law is an attempt to criminalize what was once normal behavior by requiring background checks where none are needed: buying your kid a gun, handing your gun to a friend to shoot, leaving your weapon collection to heirs in your will.
Straw purchasers for criminals will not comply with the law, nor will thieves who steal guns. It’s all about making gun ownership as difficult as possible for the honest citizen.
In that case, why don’t we put a big wall along the south side of the I10 right-of-way and give the rest of it back to Mexico?
And, of course, the feds never bother pursuing straw buyers or people who lie on their applications. That takes too much work, and doesn’t result in big headlines and perp walks with high-profile suspects. One of my maxims as a cop was: It’s always easier to enforce the law on the law-abiding.
Houston? Try Austin. New Mexico has 2.095 million people; the Austin metro area has 2.115 million. Having lived and worked in both, I’d say Austin is a lot richer. There are four metro areas in Texas with larger populations than NM; Houston and Dallas both have more than triple the population. Texas as a whole has about 14 times the population of NM, but only a little more than twice the area. I would say that Texas is probably much more than 14 times as rich as NM.
(This is not to say that NM is a third-world pit and we’re packed in like sardines here in Texas.)
The point is that the Dims who now run NM are literally treating the surplus like the goose that laid the golden egg.
Don’t they run around chanting in Taos. Or something.
Just stay away from Taos in general.
I think that already happen, but they forgot to build the wall.
The US Attorney in Chicago for years (under both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations) has stated as official policy that they will not prosecute straw buyers.
I think the only reason a straw buyer in Western New York (where I lived until recently) was that the end result of the straw purchase was a very high profile fatal ambush of fire fighters responding to the house fire the shooter started.
Until you start enforcing straw buyers, you’re not serious about enforceable gun control, so additional gun control laws won’t accomplish a single thing.
I’m not quite sure how you detect straw buyers. The dealer did get pretty sticky when I said I was buying a Mossberg 590 for my wife (sorry, Boss, you’re in a different income category than I am).
New Mexico’s government is pretty diffuse. The biggest power a county government has in New Mexico is law enforcement with elected sheriffs.
By state law, sheriffs are term limited to two consecutive 2 year terms. They can run again after being out of office for a term.
I’ll bet that these 25 counties don’t have a big metropolitan area within them, with the county government being the most significant government in the area.