Posted on 09/09/2023 1:26:39 PM PDT by billorites
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday suspended laws that allow open and concealed carry of firearms in Albuquerque for 30 days after declaring a public health emergency. The order, in my view, is flagrantly unconstitutional under existing Second Amendment precedent. It could also be a calculated effort to evade a ruling by making the period of suspension so short that it becomes moot before any final decision is reached by a court.
The order cites recent cases of gun-related violence in and around the city, including the killing of an 11-year-old boy dead and the wounding of a woman in their vehicle in an apparent road rage incident after a baseball game.
Grisham declared that “as I said yesterday, the time for standard measures has passed. And when New Mexicans are afraid to be in crowds, to take their kids to school, to leave a baseball game—when their very right to exist is threatened by the prospect of violence at every turn—something is very wrong.”
Democratic leaders have increasingly turned to a claim used successfully during the pandemic in declaring a health emergency to maximize unilateral authority of governors. There have also been calls to declare racism a public health emergency, supported by groups like the American Public Health Association. Transgender programs have also been declared a public health emergency by some groups. The motivation behind many of these calls is not to negate constitutional rights, but the question is whether such declarations allow governors discretion to suspend or curtail individual rights.
As the list of claimed health emergencies grow, even state Democratic judges may begin to balk at the obvious end run around constitutional rights.
The order allows for an expansion to other cities that meet the threshold for violent crime if 1,000 or more violent crimes per 100,000 residents have occurred per year since 2021. It also sets a threshold of 90 firearms-related emergency room visits per 100,000 residents have occurred between July 2022 and June of this year.
The taking away of individual rights as an emergency measure is hardly new. For centuries, governments have claimed that the suspension of individual rights is necessary for the good of citizens.
What is striking about this effort is the short specified period. By setting a 30-day period, the Governor makes it difficult to secure a final decision. She could face a preliminary injunction in that time. However, if she gets a sympathetic trial judge, the time could run out before a final ruling can be secured on appeal. In any case, it makes it less likely that the case can be taken to the Supreme Court or even through the federal court system.
Yet, challengers could argue that the matter is not moot when the order can be and is likely to be repeated in the future. That is always a challenging claim to make, but it is clearly true in this case. What is clear is that this is unambiguously and undeniably unconstitutional under existing precedent.
Even if an injunction is secured on the basis of a presumptively unconstitutional act, many will of course celebrate the boldness of Grisham in taking away an individual right under a clever measure. It is, however, too clever by half. If a court decides that this is not moot at the end of the period, New Mexico could supply a vehicle to curtail future such claims.
We have seen how Democratic strongholds have proven the greatest assets for gun-rights advocates. Major Democratic cities are delivering lasting self-inflicted wounds to gun control efforts with poorly conceived and poorly drafted measures.
In 2008, the District of Columbia brought us District of Columbia v. Heller, the watershed decision declaring that the Second Amendment protects the individual right of gun possession.
In 2010, Chicago brought us McDonald v. City of Chicago, in which the Court declared that that right is incorporated against state and local government.
However, no state has done more for the Second Amendment than New York. The state has been a fountain of unconstitutional laws — and the basis for a series of wins for Second Amendment advocates.
New Mexico could now prove the next big opportunity for gun rights advocates in tackling the public health rationale for gun control.
increased crime so disarm potential victims
Brilliant thinking. The democrats are so smart! Just ask them.
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy!
The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe!
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men!
Ayn Rand
Whether it is private or public actors, anyone who invades your privacy is your enemy.
Thanks to cgbg for the above reality.
In Virginia, when the idiot dan hellmer, a delegate in Virginia, entered a bill to make owners of certain guns felons, 10s of thousands decended on Richmond open carrying their weapons. The bill was voted down by other democrats in the senate.
The same thing must happen in New Mexico. Hundreds of thousand and millions if we could make it happen, must descend on Albuquerque and open carry all sorts of weapons, all day and all night long.
They are not allowed to do it.
But they are Dems, so...
Maybe this will wake people up, and NM will go our way in 2024.
Time to go to court
Sounds like the only way to bring a challenge in the courts is to take a hit for the team and be arrested for the non-crime and getting the non-law trashcanned for present and future by acquittal.
But I’m neither a lawyer, nor a New Mexican.
We must pour into Mew Mexico and open carry everywhere...and I mean everywhere.
It already did, the Demonrats merely stole it.
It’s a therapeutic loss of rights
1. There will be an even bigger ‘public health’ emergency when crooks have free reign on the citizenry.
2. If this is such a problem, then the Governor better make sure he goes all the way: disarm the police, the national guard, and all private security — including his own.
* he/she... I don’t wanna assume any pronouns for a Democrat.
One of these days, idiots like this over-stepping governor will get a Supreme Court decision nullify all state and local laws from infringing upon the 2nd amendment. The time is now.
This fat little troll (she’s under 5’ tall) knows this will blast her name into the national headline. She’s looking for publicity to possible replace kamala as VP in ‘24. She knows damn well this isn’t constitutional. That’s why she’s doing it. She’s a horrible, narcissistic person.
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