>New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is facing lawsuits and calls for impeachment after issuing a public health order suspending the open carry of firearms in regions of Albuquerque, the state’s largest metropolitan area.
Lujan Grisham issued the public health order on September 8. The order would have suspended the right to carry firearms in some public areas for at least 30 days. However, U.S. District Judge David Urias blocked the gun ban. The governor responded by amending the order to cover public parks and playgrounds in high-violent crime areas.
This public health order comes after a recent string of shootings in New Mexico, including the death of an 11-year-old boy outside of a minor league baseball stadium in early September. New Mexico consistently has one of the highest rates of gun violence in the nation. The state’s increase in gun deaths from 2009 to 2018 was 43%, more than twice the national average.
Two New Mexican Republican state representatives, John Block and Stefani Lord, are calling for the governor to be impeached over the public health order.
“I have a newsflash for the Governor: The Second Amendment is an absolute right and so is my authority to impeach you for violating your oath to New Mexico and the United States,” Lord said in a joint statement with Block.
Various gun rights organizations, including the National Association for Gun Rights (NGAR) and Gun Owners of America (GOA), called for and were granted temporary restraining orders. The same organizations have filed lawsuits against the gun ban, calling it unconstitutional.
In a press release, Hannah Hill, Executive Director of the National Foundation for Gun Rights (legal branch of the NAGR), stated, “As our attorney said in court today, there is no exception to the Second Amendment. As a result of today’s temporary restraining order, the law-abiding gun owners of Albuquerque are able once again to exercise their right to bear arms.”
In a separate news release, the GOA stated that the gun ban was a “gross and egregious violation of the U.S. Constitution.”
“There’s no public health order exception in the Constitution,” said John Crump, the Virginia State Director for GOA, in an interview.
“We will fight any type of gun bans like this anywhere in the country, doesn’t matter where. They’re clearly unconstitutional. And you’ll be hard-pressed to find any legal scholar to say that her gun ban or any type of gun ban like this is constitutional,” Crump continued.
It’s not just the Republicans and gun-rights groups that oppose the idea. Lujan Grisham, New Mexico’s first female Democratic Governor, faces criticism from both sides of the political aisle.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, stated in a letter to the governor that he did not believe the ban “will have any meaningful impact on public safety,” and that his office would not defend her in cases that challenged the order. He also questioned the ban’s constitutionality. Another Democrat, Bernalillo County Sheriff Josh Allen, stated that he would not enforce the ban.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also opposes the ban, citing concerns that it would lead to “overzealous policing and senseless incarceration.”
In a statement, Lalita Moskowitz, Litigation Manager of ACLU New Mexico, said, “Historically, this kind of approach leads to the over-policing of our communities, racial profiling, and increased misery in the lives of already marginalized people. Instead, the governor should be following evidence-based solutions such as meaningful diversion and violence intervention programs and addressing the root causes of violence.”
Even among gun control advocates, the proposed ban is finding little support. Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, worries about what an all-out ban would bring, saying, “A ban [is] not going to get us where we need to get. We have to take a holistic approach when it comes to gun violence prevention in this state and in this country.”
However, Viscoli is grateful for the conversation that the order has provoked.
“For the first time in a long time, everybody’s having a real discussion about gun violence prevention, and that’s what this order did,” Viscoli said in an interview.
For now, there is no indication that the call for impeachment is gaining momentum in the state legislature. The temporary restraining order will remain in place until a hearing in early October.