Craig Stumpf, director of sales at Calibers Shooting Range in Albuquerque and an instructor for first-time shooters, fires at a target with a Glock 19 Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. State Sens. Debbie O’Malley and Heather Berghmans, both of Albuquerque, have introduced a proposed Gas-Operated Semi-Automatic Firearms Exclusion Act. Photo by Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican 

By Daniel J. Chacón
The Santa Fe New Mexican

State Sen. Debbie O’Malley and her husband, Michael, were both sound asleep early one morning in December 2022 when a piercing noise outside their Albuquerque home jolted them awake.

“I said, ‘God, is somebody, like, pounding on the door with a fist?’ ” recalled O’Malley, a freshman Democrat in the New Mexico Senate who was finishing her term as a Bernalillo County commissioner at the time.

“Boom! Boom! Boom!” she said.

The sound of gunshots isn’t that unusual where she lives in Albuquerque’s North Valley, O’Malley said. But she and her husband later discovered their house was one of several that had been shot up in a series of shootings targeting politicians’ homes in the Duke City in late 2022 and early 2023.

“They think that there were two different kinds of guns that were used,” she said. “One was a … semiautomatic or one that delivered a lot of rounds.”

After experiencing gun violence firsthand in a city that has become the poster child of lawlessness in New Mexico, O’Malley is among a handful of Democrats championing what will likely be one of the most contentious pieces of legislation of the 60-day session: A bill that would ban the sale or transfer of semiautomatic rifles.

“It allows people who already own assault weapons to keep their firearms, but you do have to go through a certification process, which they’ll basically have 10 months to complete,” she said, adding she’s been working with the Governor’s Office on the proposed piece of legislation.

Senate Bill 279, known as the Gas-Operated Semiautomatic Firearms Exclusion Act, or GOSAFE, also would prohibit the manufacture and sale of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. The legislation is modeled after a bill U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich is co-sponsoring that also seeks to regulate gas-operated semiautomatic weapons.

Advocates say the local version would create the state’s first law banning machine guns and prohibit dangerous machine gun conversion devices, like Glock switches.

The bill, which calls on the attorney general to compile a list of firearms that would be subject to the measure if signed into law, is among the first gun control measures to be introduced during this year’s legislative session.

Another proposal, Senate Bill 244, would create the crime of unlawful transfer of a firearm to a minor, with some exceptions, such as when a minor is hunting legally or participating in an organized competition involving firearms.

A third bill, Senate Bill 255, would create the crime of “facilitation of the unlawful sale of a firearm without a background check.”

New poll on gun control

The filing of the three gun control measures comes as Everytown for Gun Safety and the New Mexico chapters of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action prepare to unveil new polling they say shows strong bipartisan support for passing an assault weapons ban.

The poll of 1,300 New Mexico adults by Survey USA was conducted Dec. 10-14.

Among the poll’s key findings:

• 81% of respondents consider gun violence prevention a priority for the session, including 73% of gun owners and 69% of Republicans.
• 72% of respondents believe state lawmakers still have work to do on addressing gun safety and gun crime.
• 62% of respondents support an assault weapons ban.

“As lawmakers debate strengthening our state’s gun safety laws, this polling shows a clear support from New Mexican voters to keep weapons of war off our streets and save lives,” Alexis Jimenez, a volunteer with the New Mexico chapter of Moms Demand Action, said in a statement.

“For far too long our families have been haunted at supermarkets, movie theaters and parks by the risks of weapons of war,” she added. “A ban on assault weapons will reinstate our right to be safe in the places we cherish.”

The polling, however, doesn’t reflect the sentiment among some Second Amendment advocates.

Opponents call bill ‘extreme’

SB 279, like a lot of gun control measures, is already generating stiff opposition.

The bill “is yet another absurd gun legislation that penalizes approximately 1.5 million lawful gun owners of the most popular sporting rifle in the United States,” said Rep. Stefani Lord, R-Sandia Park.

“This unconstitutional bill also establishes an invasive gun registry and requires ‘fixed magazines’ that are permanently attached to the firearm, limiting capacity to 10 rounds,” added Lord, a staunch gun rights advocate. “Banning these types of rifles will have no effect on suicide, and there is no evidence that it will reduce the occurrence of mass shootings.”

Capitol insiders say the bill is unlikely to make it across the finish line and also has the potential to drive up the sale of such firearms amid concerns it will become law.

Supporters are undeterred.

“This legislation is an answer to the gun industry’s decade-old practice of pushing military-style guns out into the civilian market, a practice that has earned companies billions of dollars since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 or the 2023 mass shooting in Farmington where a teenager fired in a residential area,” Olivia Li, policy counsel at Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement.

“Gun companies benefit from selling more and more guns like the AR-15, but communities do not,” Li added.

Li called the legislation an “innovative bill” that brings New Mexico’s firearm regulations into the 21st century.

“It prohibits the sale and manufacture of assault weapons that can fire dozens of rounds in seconds — the kind of guns that are used in our country’s deadliest mass shootings,” she said.

Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, echoed the sentiment.

“We commend the senators for having the courage to drop Senate Bill 279,” she said. “These are more tools designed to kill as many people as possible and have no business in our civilian population.”

Ryan Burt, CEO of Calibers Indoor Shooting Ranges in Albuquerque, said the bill is “far more overreaching” than the bill drafters and sponsors probably understand.

“The bill would essentially make any semiautomatic firearm, or even some non-semiautomatic firearms, illegal because 95% of the firearms that are in the marketplace are gas-operated,” he said.

John Commerford, executive director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Act, agreed, saying “anti-gun legislators” in New Mexico have introduced “one of the most extreme gun control bills in the country.”

“Under the guise of public safety, SB 279 would ban commonly owned firearms that New Mexicans use for hunting, competitive shooting and self-defense,” he said in a statement. “NRA members will fight this clearly unconstitutional legislation at every turn.”

Burt said lawmakers should work with people in the industry to find solutions to the “real issues,” from gun violence to suicide.

“Going after firearms with these backdoor sort of ways [isn’t] going to solve the issue at all,” he said. “All that does is it divides us more, makes us not trust each other and makes us not be able to sit down at the table to engage in meaningful discussions.”

O’Malley, the lead sponsor of the bill in the Senate, said concerns about gun violence are growing.

“I do think this is the right thing to do,” she said.

O’Malley said some people have told her the bill wouldn’t make much of a dent in New Mexico, but she believes otherwise.

“There’s always going to be people who break the law,” she said. “They do that all day long. Should we stop having laws?”