By KHALIL SPENCERI just want to clarify a couple things in response to Jody Benson’s letter as well as thank her for her engagement on the topic (link).
I did not say that we should reject House Bill 50. What I said was the original and present wording was problematic. There is still plenty of time in this legislative session to find some common ground on this
bill and amend it so it has bipartisan and gun owner support.
To excerpt from my own essay (link), what I said was “…provisions in the bill put onerous constraints on temporary transfers and casual sales between law abiding people who know and can vet each other without government oversight. If we expect any sort of bipartisan support for this bill, and for the Governor to sign it, some “common sense” exemptions to the background check provisions will be needed…I think a highly modified version of the pre-filed bills could become law and could make incremental but measurable reductions in gun violence while not making life miserable for law abiding citizens.”
My understanding is that the political sausage is still being made with this bill and there is hope that a bill will come out of this legislative session with more than one-sided support. A requirement to obtain a background check when selling a gun to a stranger is not a mortal wound to the Second Amendment. Neither is it a silver bullet; efforts to make this bill as stringent as possible will provide little additional return on the investment except for a bumper crop of acrimony from gun owners.
If I have a major criticism in how this topic has been handed at the Legislature, it is that even a casual study of the history of this bill shows that it was largely written (or ghost-written) by outside lobbyists (Everytown for Gun Safety). The bill is almost identical to legislation that Everytown barely passed in Nevada (where it has been found to be unworkable and on hold due to the bill writer’s lack of familiarity with Nevada’s relationship to the Federal background check system) and saw rejected in Maine. I wonder if we would have been better off if we wrote a background check bill ourselves, being more
> sensitive to local and regional issues and attempting to work across party lines. Perhaps problems with wording and scope could have been handled in advance if outside lobbying forces were not putting such a heavy thumb on the scales (data on campaign contributions are available online with the Secretary of State).
The potentially sad part of this discussion could be that if this bill is passed in onerous form, or if it fails entirely by votes or veto, the future discussions will be focused on acrimonious debates as to who is at fault for polarizing the issue, rather than on building a consensus discussion of how to make New Mexico a safer place to live while preserving New Mexico’s cultural traditions of firearms ownership and enjoyment. Meanwhile, the senseless shootings in places like Albuquerque will continue.
I hope the NRA and Everytown, as well as our legislators, are listening.
