Another bill to impose a 14-day waiting period on gun purchases made it out of the Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee on Sunday. Senate Bill 427 passed on a 6-1 vote. It would do the same thing as House Bill 100, which made it out of two committees with a do-pass recommendation last month but hasn’t yet been brought to the House floor. New Mexico does not currently have a waiting period to buy a firearm. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, said 14 days would put New Mexico at the high end of waiting periods.
Three Albuquerque city councilors announced they filed three proposed ordinances related to gun possession in the council chambers, storage of guns and threats of violence online.
Councilors Pat Davis, Isaac Benton and Diane Gibson held a press conference Wednesday afternoon to present their proposals.
One ordinance would prohibit guns at functions like city council or county commission meetings and public forums, like town hall meetings with constituents.
Gibson said many city meetings get heated and some of her constituents have expressed concern for their safety.
“Many of these gatherings involve a lot of emotions, people are very passionate,” Gibson said. “It’s already a highly charged situation at many of these venues.”
Another ordinance would make it a misdemeanor to leave a gun accessible to others without some sort of lock or device that would prevent the use of it.
“When you lay a gun down and walk away, we want to be sure it’s not accesible for a kid who can use it, someone who commits suicide or a bad guy who sees it as a target to take,” Davis said.
Davis, a former police officer, added that simply locking it in a vehicle would not be compliant with the proposal, noting that many guns are stolen out of owners’ cars.
“If it’s in your car it just needs to be secure and so it can’t be operable,” Davis said. “You can’t shoot a gun that doesn’t shoot bullets.”
The third ordinance would extend a city ordinance prohibiting threats of violence to online platforms.
One Albuquerque attorney said the councilors would be violating the state constitution if the proposals passed.
Blair Dunn, who has a history of suing state agencies, said he’s already preparing a case against the councilors.
“They can’t do it, it’s against the constitution,” Dunn said.
Indeed, New Mexico’s constitution includes a provision that only allows gun laws on the state level.
But during the councilor’s press conference, Davis said he and his colleagues are prepared to defend their legislation.
“We believe we have a defendable case and we’re willing to take it as far as we have to in order to keep our city safe,” Davis said.
Dunn is already representing a group that is suing New Mexico’s secretary of state and attorney general for denying an attempt to overturn a state gun law through a petition process.
Regardless, the proposals will need more support than from the three councilors to get a shot at passing.
A Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful released a gun plan Friday that includes support for an assault weapons ban and universal and expanded background checks. New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said she also supports enacting red flag laws and raising the minimum age to purchase a rifle to 21.
“This epidemic has claimed the lives of too many innocent Americans–far too many of them children–and it is well beyond time for Congress to act to protect Americans from the scourge of gun violence,” Toulouse Oliver said in her gun safety plan. “In the U.S. Senate, I will fight for common-sense gun-safety legislation as if my own children’s lives depended on it–because they do.”
Toulouse Oliver cites the rise in mass shootings, including the shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio that left more than 30 people dead and dozens more injured, as reasons why to reimplement a ban on assault weapons—and to expand the definition of assault weapons to include AR-15-style guns. When it comes to background checks, Toulouse Oliver says they should extend to all gun purchases—and that such background checks should include information on the online history of the person seeking a background check and extending background checks to close relatives and other members of the household. Toulouse Oliver also calls for restoring funding for researching the effects of gun violence.
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich has sought to repeal the Dickey Amendment, which bars the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from researching gun violence and its impact on public health.
After years of dispute, the governor of Texas signed legislation that will allow those in Texas to carry handguns openly in public. New Mexico already allows open carry, but the move in Texas brings renewed attention to the issue of openly carrying firearms.
The bill, which will not go into effect until next year, was signed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott in June. One famous Texas-based fast food chain, however, told customers that non-concealed guns will not be permitted in stores. The president of Whataburger, Preston Atkinson, issued a statement on the company’s website earlier this month regarding the new gun law and how it will affect customers. He wrote that while the company proudly serves the gun rights advocates, only concealed handguns will be allowed in stores.
A House committee tabled legislation that would have closed the “gunshow loophole” on Saturday afternoon. The vote came on a party-line vote with four Republicans voting to table the legislation and three Democrats voting against tabling. This means unless one of the Republicans has a change of heart, which is very unlikely, the bill is dead for the year. The bill, HB 44, was sponsored by Rep. Miguel Garcia, D-Albuquerque. In his presentation of the bill, Garcia said the bill was “merely” to close the gunshow loophole.
