The Roundhouse in Santa Fe. Post file photo
The Santa Fe New Mexican:
‘Constitutional carry’ bill fails: An effort to eliminate the need for adults who can legally own a gun to obtain permits to carry concealed handguns failed to advance out of its first committee on Tuesday.
House Bill 83, sponsored by three House Republicans, was tabled on a 4-2 party-line vote in the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee.
Sponsor Rep. John Block, R-Alamogordo, said requiring New Mexicans to obtain permits for concealed carry was unconstitutional and imposes “unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles on responsible citizens.”
Over the past decade or two an increasing number of generally Republican-run states have been getting rid of their pistol permitting requirements and allowing people to carry concealed handguns without a permit. About 29 states currently have “constitutional carry” laws, as their supporters call it, including neighboring Arizona and Texas.
Rep. Stefani Lord, R-Sandia Park and a co-sponsor of the bill, lambasted Democrats for tabling it.
“Instead of rewarding our law-abiding citizens, we’re going to go ahead and continue to punish them by moving to table this bill that a big chunk of our people want,” she said.
Human trafficking, inappropriate touching bills advance: Two bills aimed at increasing penalties for crimes against young people unanimously made their way out of the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee on Tuesday.
House Bill 86, filed by three House Democrats and one Republican, would make several changes to the crime of human trafficking, including expanding its definition, adding the crime under the definition of racketeering and making the human trafficking of anyone under 18 a first-degree felony.
Currently, that level of crime only applies to the human trafficking of anyone under 13.
Rob Hart, a deputy district attorney in Bernalillo County, emphasized the urgency for bolstering human trafficking laws, arguing authorities have struggled to charge traffickers.
“Law enforcement in New Mexico is up against a pretty impossible task, because the criminals do know that our laws are lax,” he told lawmakers.
House Bill 87, carried by Rep. Dayan Hochman-Vigil, D-Albuquerque, would clarify the definition of criminal sexual contact, most notably removing language specifying the crime applied to inappropriate touching of “unclothed” parts of a person’s body.
“New Mexico’s current law, the way it is written in terms of a non-consensual touching, is that such a touching has to be without clothing in order to constitute a non-consensual touching,” Hochman-Vigil said. “Which to me … doesn’t make a lot of sense.”