New Mexico Governor Loses Control as Armed Citizens Roll Into Albuquerque
What did she think was going to happen?
New Mexico’s Democratic governor has been making headlines around the country since she decided her election to a statewide office gave her the power to suspend the Constitution of the United States.
Over the weekend, her home-state constituents sent a message of their own.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday signed an executive order temporarily banning guns from being carried — openly or concealed — in Bernalillo County, home to the city of Albuquerque, or in Albuquerque itself.
Today, I signed an executive order declaring gun violence a public health emergency. To my fellow citizens: get loud. Step up. Demand change: from your neighbors, from your friends, from your communities, from your elected leaders. Enough is enough. More coming from me tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/jOt4fv4YDC
— Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (@GovMLG) September 7, 2023
And as surely as night follows day, as clockwork as the swallows returning to Capistrano, and as predictably as Americans who object fiercely to being pushed around by a government for no good reason, gun owners in Lujan Grisham’s state responded by rallying in Albuquerque on Sunday, defiantly bearing their firearms.
As KOB-TV in the city reported, more than 100 gun rights supporters turned out in Albuquerque’s Old Town section to show their support for the Second Amendment is more powerful than any governor’s pen.
“We’re not here to cause any issues. We’re just here to, you know, express our amendment rights and we’ll go from there,” one of the protesters, identified as Derek J, told the station.
Given the historic tendency of Americans to defy tyranny — it’s how the country was created, after all — the rally itself shouldn’t be surprising, though it was heartening.
What’s even more heartening was the reaction of those charged with enforcing Lujan Grisham’s order — a sign the governor doesn’t have nearly the control she apparently thinks she does.
“KOB 4 reached out to state police to see if any of the armed protesters were cited,” the station reported. “A rep got back to us saying to his knowledge, no citations were given out at the event.”
That also might not have been much of a surprise, given that the Bernalillo County district attorney, Albuquerque’s mayor and the city’s police chief have all publicly declared they would not enforce the order.
“As an officer of the court, I cannot and will not enforce something that is clearly unconstitutional,” District Attorney Sam Bregman, a Democrat who was appointed by Lujan Grisham, said Saturday, according to The Associated Press.
“Clearly unconstitutional” aren’t words commonly used by Democrats these days — the Biden administration and its partisans tend to treat the founding document like a list of suggestions rather than actual limits on the government’s power — but the phrase is unavoidable in the context of Lujan Grisham’s order.
The 30-day ban on firearms — in effect a suspension of the Second Amendment — came after the shooting death Thursday of an 11-year-old boy outside the stadium of the city’s minor league baseball team, the Albuquerque Isotopes, according to Fox News.
The measure is framed as a “public health order,” but not even liberals are buying that as leftists such as California Rep. Ted Lieu and perennial pain in the pistol butt David Hogg have weighed in on social media to denounce it as overboard.
And now, with the gun-bearing population making it crystal clear that it will not be intimidated by Lujan Grisham’s tin-pot despotism, and the law enforcement authorities making it equally clear they won’t be trying to enforce it, Americans are seeing how hollow her attempt to suspend the Constitution is.
At yesterday’s Peaceful Open Carry Protest in Old Town, Albuquerque, I met another dude who runs a Beretta 1301 Tactical Shotgun. I’ll be open carrying the entire 30 days in defiance of the governor’s illegal order. #2ndAmendment #Albuquerque pic.twitter.com/IcVk9SIxWW
— Monty Singer (@MontySingerArt) September 11, 2023
They’re watching a governor lose control in her state’s biggest city.
Whatever Lujan Grisham thought was going to happen, this probably wasn’t it.
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