🚨@RepBlock and I have asked legal counsel to start the impeachment process for @GovMLG for her violation of oath of office by mandating the ban of all firearms (even with concealed carry) in Bernalillo County.
However, when asked about a previous impeachment, the last House… https://t.co/0uF5MnXLbM— Rep Stefani Lord (@Lord4NM) September 9, 2023
Yesterday the Governor of New Mexico announced an unprecedented ban on both open and concealed carry in Bernalillo County which includes the city of Albuquerque. Clearly aware of the unconstitutional nature of her order, particularly after the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said . . .
I welcome the debate and fight about how to make New Mexicans safer.
She’s about to get that fight. Grisham knew full well that what she’s doing is blatantly unconstitutional and won’t stand up to a court challenge. She just doesn’t care. And she apparently doesn’t see any significant political consequences coming her way as a result.
As Charles C.W. Cooke wrote . . .
If our elected officials were allowed to shelve our unalienable rights every time they believed that those rights were being abused by outlaws, then they wouldn’t be unalienable rights; they’d be privileges. Lujan Grisham knows this — which is why she has said not only that she has “warned everyone that we expect a direct challenge,” but that the arrival of such a challenge is “the way it should work.” Those are the words of a person who knows she is breaking the law but has resolved to do it anyway.
As the tweet at the top makes clear, members in the New Mexico House have already begun to explore impeachment options. While that would be abundantly satisfying, impeachment is a long shot at best.
Meanwhile, a number of local and national gun rights organizations are preparing challenges to the ban and will file for injunctions to block Grisham’s ban within days, if not hours.
KOAT quoted Zachary Fort of the New Mexico Shooting Sports Association who said his organization is preparing a legal challenge . . .
“What the governor tried to do flies directly in the face of the (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen) decision by the Supreme Court, where they found that you have a constitutionally protected right to carry a firearm outside your own home,” Fort said. “The Supreme Court said that very clearly in their Bruen decision. So, it’s clearly contradictory to that.”
TTAG spoke with with representatives of both the Second Amendment Foundation and the National Association for Gun Rights this morning. Both are spinning up their own challenges as well and plan to file for injunctions to block enforcement of the ban as soon as their legal ducks can be put in a row. Other gun rights orgs will likely also be involved as well.
Grisham’s power-grab — declaring that guns are a “pubic health emergency” and then using that pretense to suspend the exercise of an enumerated civil right — should be the kind of bridge-too-far blunder that ends a political career. In the old days (ten or more years ago) that might have been the case.
Now, however, this kind of bold-faced authoritarianism in the service of civilian disarmament is the kind of thing that will make her a celebrity on the far left, cheered on by the media.
That said, it’s more than interesting that as of this writing, none of the big three Gun Control Industry operations — Brady, Everytown, and Giffords — have said a word about Grisham’s move publicly. Not one of them. Deafening silence. Even Shannon Watts has kept her prodigious yap shut on the subject so far.
Ryan Busse, one of the most avid, attention-whoring sock puppets on the Gun Control Industry payroll, tweeted this within the last hour.
Suspending concealed carry permits:
Is a bad idea.
Will not solve anything, may make things worse.
Is the sort of knee-jerk that only fosters distrust.The best policy involves bringing responsible gunowners to the table to work towards real solutions. This ain’t one of them https://t.co/bx9dfXwTzM
— Ryan Busse (@ryandbusse) September 9, 2023
Hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Busse may be a sniveling, gun-grabbing simp, but he’s smart enough to recognize a bad legal and political move when he sees one.
Make no mistake, everyone involved at all three gun control operations is, behind closed doors, thrilled by what Grisham’s done and would dearly love to see it repeated in other anti-gun states. But they also recognize dangerous overreach and a potential PR disaster when they see it. That’s what Grisham did yesterday. The only question left is how big a political price she will pay as a result.