Dealing with dire penalties if anti-gun laws made it via the legislature and went to gun-hating Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s desk for consideration, New Mexico gun homeowners dodged a bullet lately when two unhealthy measures didn’t survive the legislative course of.
One such measure, SB 318, tried to permit assaults on gun makers and gun retailers by subverting the federal Safety of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Particularly, it could have expanded the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act to incorporate firearms, components and equipment, imposing extreme penalties of $30,000 per violation and holding producers, distributors and on-line platforms collectively chargeable for actions by third events.
“It permits personal lawsuits with out proof of hurt and grants sweeping authority to the Lawyer Common to pursue civil penalties,” NRA’s Institute for Legislative Motion mentioned in a information alert. “This overreach will increase compliance prices, threatens lawful companies with extreme litigation and raises severe constitutional and interstate commerce issues, all whereas doing little to deal with felony misuse of firearms.”
Luckily for New Mexico gun homeowners, the measure was by no means taken up by the total senate.
One other measure, SB 279, would have banned gas-operated, semi-automatic rifles, together with firearms magazines holding greater than 10 rounds of ammo. House owners of such weapons wanting to maintain them must “certify” them with the federal government, making a gun registry that might simply be used when and if the federal government later voted to confiscate these weapons. That measure was accredited within the Senate Judiciary Committee however was by no means thought-about within the Senate Finance Committee.
For these readers who don’t bear in mind Gov. Lujan Grisham, she’s the one that final yr signed, then re-signed, an govt order banning the carry of firearms in public parks and playgrounds in Albuquerque and surrounding Bernalillo County underneath the auspices of public security. That order resulted in a variety of lawsuits by gun-rights teams.
In fact, Gov. Lujan Grisham wasn’t happy that the 2 payments mentioned above weren’t handed by the legislature and despatched to her for her signature.
“Whereas we made progress on common free college lunch, literacy, water planning, and firefighting sources, I can’t ignore that we did not adequately deal with the general public security disaster going through our state,” the governor mentioned in a ready assertion. “With 270 public security payments launched this session and solely a handful handed, now we have not met our accountability to New Mexicans.”
There’s little question that Gov. Lujan Grisham will proceed to combat to additional infringe on the Second Modification rights of New Mexico’s lawful gun homeowners. As she mentioned final yr in the course of the uproar over her Albuquerque carry ban, “No constitutional proper, for my part … is meant to be absolute.”
