Michael Bloomberg, through his captive anti-gun astroturf org Everytown for Gun Safety, has pumped million into states to find ways to infringe on the Second Amendment in ways he can’t on a federal level. His latest attempt, in New Mexico, was shot down on Monday. A key vote against the measure came from Representative Eliseo Alcon (D) Milan.
A legislative committee on Monday effectively killed a bill to expand background checks for gun purchases — an issue that drew large crowds to the Capitol as well as big campaign contributions and intense lobbying and advertising.
The House Judiciary Committee voted 7-6 to table House Bill 548 after a lengthy hearing. It marked the defeat of the most recent gun-control bill sponsored by Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richard, D-Los Alamos.
Democrat Eliseo Alcon of Milan joined the six Republicans on the panel to stop the measure, which would have required background checks on all sales of firearms at gun shows and from advertisements on the internet or print publications.
The Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund has poured money into the state to advance civilian disarmament measures there.
In total, Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund spent more than $250,000 during the 2016 election in New Mexico.
The NRA only spent $10,000 in New Mexico in 2016, but has spent $44,377 there in 2017 opposing the current gun control scheme. The money went to buy Internet ads to oppose the “universal background check” measure.
Representative Alcon didn’t receive any money from Everytown or from the NRA in 2016. He’s a disabled Vietnam veteran and was a judge before being elected to the legislature. Milan is a small town of 3,600 people that is located about half way between Albuquerque and the Arizona border.
Oh, and 32 of 33 New Mexico sheriffs opposed the legislation.
Opponents say the regulations wouldn’t actually deter criminals, who would just ignore them, and merely inconvenience law-abiding citizens. Sheriffs across New Mexico have turned out to oppose the legislation and say it wouldn’t have prevented Webster’s death because dangerous criminals will still find a way to get firearms.
New Mexico is a moderately gun friendly state that leans Democrat. It is also a mostly rural state that doesn’t like to be pushed around by out-of-state interests. Democrats hold majorities in both houses.
Second Amendment supporters count on rural Democrats like Representative Alcon to honor their oath to support the Constitution. For bucking the party line, he’s TTAG’s gun hero of the day.
©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Kudos to him for putting country (and community) above party.
The big win here was the sheriffs though. If it’d gone the other way, with 32 of 33 sheriffs supporting it, I can’t see how they wouldn’t have gotten it passed. Good on the sheriffs for reasonable, sound thinking.
New Mexico is one of the few places that can be reasonably described as ‘libertarian’. It’s also very rural and when you have drug runners and rattlesnakes running over your front yard the last thing you need is to be hassled about your shotgun.
It’s a very nice state, drug runners aside. I spent my spring break there last March/April, chasing down abandoned mines in the mountains, off-roading, and shooting tumbleweeds. Everyone we met was incredibly nice, and the legal climate is generally pro-gun and libertarian as you described. I’d have no objections to living there, and may well wind up working around Silver City or Santa Rita after I graduate. Copper prices are going up, and mining is sitting pretty with Trump in office…
Now that my wife and I are retired, I have thought about moving from eastern Nebraska to the Silver City area. We are amateur astronomers and the weather there is much more astronomy friendly than at our current location. Pitch black skies half an hour from a house in town are very tempting. Several astronomers have built homes south of City of Rocks State Park next to the highway from Silver City to Deming. The call their community New Mexico Astronomy Village.
Nice to see that not all Dems are demented, good job.
I’ve said before that New Mexico has some odd politics. It’s one of the last refuges for “blue dog” Democrats.
Unfortunately the capital, Santa Fe, is completely whacked out liberal. This is the city that tried to pass an ordinance on magazine capacity (on cops too) even though the city attorney told them the New Mexico Constitution forbade it.
They spent an ungodly amount of time on that when they have serious pressing issues, like not enough electricity in downtown, before someone actual realized that the city attorney was right. But hey, they spent like three months back in 2005 crafting and passing the perfect resolution to condemn George W. Bush too.
Santa Fe was like that even 20 years ago, when I spent any significant time there. Even then it was piling up with new age hippies looking for a place to do some downtime when not ‘experiencing the vortices’ of their Sedona home.
(But it was cool that Europa Motors was the only place grey-marketing G-Wagens back in the day [’80s-’90s]. Sadly, they were too successful, and MBNA decided to import them themselves and make them all fancified. Now every asswipe has one…)
SF has been hippied out since the 1970’s. I still don’t understand how my parents stand living just outside the city.
You really don’t get an appreciation for how flat out dumb people there are unless you live there though. The local paper will make you either laugh or cry.
Also, your average Santa Fean is an asshole.
True, true. SF has been hippified since the early ’70s. They just weren’t ones with any real money (movie stars) ’til the late ’80s, AFAIK. Which is when the trouble started…
Movie stars and restauranteurs… They’re both basically the devil. Though knowing some of the restaurant owners at least one is cool.
There there’s the damn arteests. Christ, don’t get me started on them. But those folks have had serious money since Georgia O’Keef (sp?) hit the scene.
“New Mexico is a moderately gun friendly state that leans Mexican.”
FIFY
I’ve always preferred “New Mexico, cleaner than the original!”
Hey, at least when it comes to gun laws they’re better than their neighbor to the East…
“Neighbors to the East”
Texas and Oklahoma, which are you referring to?
Ahhh….New Mexico….the Land of Enchantment. Well, that is if you find having no castle doctrine enchanting. Maybe it should be called the Land of Entrapment? Having to renew your carry license by sitting in class for four hours (we do ours online in about 30 seconds) sounds like being trapped in the system. Yikes, and you have to pass the NM proficiency test every two years of your measly four year carry licenses?? C’mon!
Can’t carry in a restaurant if it serves more than just beer and wine, regardless whether you’re drinking? Can’t carry in a restaurant with a liquor license at all unless it derives 60% or more of its gross sales from food? Can’t carry more than one concealed firearm at a time? Seriously?! As I write this in Houston, I’d be a criminal in New Mexico, under that law.
Damn it feels good to be a Texan!
So, now it’s a good thing a bill gets killed in committee while it was bad in Florida.
Please make up your minds on how the legislative process is supposed to work.
It’s supposed to work for the people and not against them. Got it, nimrod?
Killing bills in committee is a normal part of our legislative process. It’s a bad thing when the bill is a good one and a good thing when the bill is bad.
Think of it this way. Person A shoots Person B. Good thing or bad thing? Depends on the circumstances: who A and B are, what was going on, etc., etc. There are plenty of scenarios where it’s a great thing that A shot B, and there are plenty of scenarios where it’s an absolute abomination. But if all you know is that A somehow fired a gun at B, then you don’t know enough to make an assessment.
I don’t think this was the topic of discussion. Usually the topic of discussion is centered around gun rights on this website.
I dont think anybody us challenging the mechanics of the legislative process, per se. The problem is when that process is abused to effect a further abuse of people’s freedom.
The default position is that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Blocking legislation that would violate that tenet is a good thing. Blocking legislation that would have removed infringements is a bad thing.
It isn’t a matter of blocking via committee being good or bad in itself. It’s a matter of supporting or violating the Constitution, whose Second Amendment is very clear. It isn’t as though we’re arguing over something subjective and inconsequential, like what to name a local highway or whether to proclaim a day in honor of so and so.
Wow. So after it is all over and those of living here have done all the fighting, TTAG finally gets off its rear end to report on the issue. How nice, after I and others I know had sent in emails several times asking the issue be covered. For everyone that hates the NRA, at least they were here alerting people and getting the base to the state capital. TTAG just sat on its butt for this fight.
A border state needs all the defensive guns possible.
New Mexicos should reform here restrictive shall issue ccw law (15 hours, limited to 2 gun”s, bus still illegal and bar + k12 is an felony) and passe an stand your ground law !
Watch Kansas 4 right direction
Oh how we could use stand up guys like this in the poo hole state of Kaliforna. Sadly, most of the voters here run only on their brain stems. Bloomburg, you sir are an ANTI AMERICAN a-hole.