By KHAL SPENCERSanta Fe
Some have lavished considerable praise over the gun control bills introduced in the Legislature. The Albuquerque Journal, saying for example of House/Senate Bill 8, the universal background check bill, that it would dissuade someone from buying a gun “…from some sketchy character in a parking lot in response to an ad on the internet…”.
Aside from the fact that no one knows in detail how bad guys in New Mexico get their guns and recent Federal data suggest the Internet is not an important conduit, if that is what was really intended, I think the Journal would find overwhelming support from gun owners.
But that’s not what the bill would do. The law, if passed, would be hard to enforce and would not only regulate buying a gun from that sketchy character, but would regulate, with a time consuming and expensive background check, the sale of a gun between trusted friends, neighbors or law-abiding gun club members of long standing.
For that matter, the bill would regulate transactions between holders of a New Mexico Concealed Carry permit, who are vetted in a far more painstaking manner than a simple Federal background check. The bill, to put it mildly, overreaches and treats all gun owners as loose cannons.
Other proposed gun legislation often follows a similar pattern.
I think I speak for a lot of gun owners who wish our legislators would consult us when writing these bills. Instead, we are usually shut out of the loop as bills are written by anti-gun lobbyists and handed to legislative sponsors or at best, are written by those not familiar with gun culture. Until that process changes, it will be hard to get buy-in from gun owners. In my view, that is a critical flaw in the process: convincing gun owners to buy into these safeguards and gain trust that these laws are not ideological clubs over our heads but are truly intended for the common good and aimed at the “shady characters” rather than the rest of us.