Letter To The Editor: Don’t Give Up Constitutional Rights For Promise Of Security

By JAMES FOLEY
Los Alamos

I am a little frustrated with politicians that believe our constitutional rights are worth giving up for the promise of security. There are too many of these laws that require you to give up your rights to be safer.

The reality is if you buy into to what they are selling, you lose your rights for little or no improvement in security. Politicians and lobbyists try to convince you that there is a big problem and they have the answer. They are using fear to get you to do something they want you to do. They will try to convince you that the new law is common sense and required to stop the “epidemic”.

Most of the time the issue isn’t as big as they make it out to be.

So now the New Mexico legislature is considering a new bill (HB-50) that will decrease domestic violence, police shootings and mass shootings by up to 52 percent. All we have to do is give up a little of our 2nd amendment rights. How could I not want to support this? Mainly, because I don’t think it would help as much as some would have you believe. It is illegal for a convicted felon to buy a gun from anyone. It is illegal to sell a gun to a known felon. Adding another law to make it more illegal would not have stopped Davon Lyon from obtaining a gun.

Repeat criminals for some reason don’t care too much about breaking the law. In 2015 heroin deaths (12,989) slightly surpassed all gun homicides (12,979) in this country. I am pretty sure that buying/selling heroin is illegal for everyone even with a background check.

Domestic violence in this state is a problem. While New Mexico is not the deadliest state for domestic violence incidents it is certainly in the top ten. Eighteen women in New Mexico were murdered in 2014 by their domestic partner and that is 18 too many. Lets work on the real problems and prevent domestic violence of any kind.

This nation lost 64 police officers to firearms in 2016 and that included 21 ambush-style shootings. These numbers are lower than the decades before. Lets work on keeping criminals from offending again instead of letting them out to commit more crimes while on bail. A mother and daughter would be alive today if two car thieves were not let out of jail so easily.

Is it so wrong to believe that we don’t have to give up our rights for security? I don’t think so.

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