New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is term-limited and won't be able to run for re-election this year, so the 30-day budget session now underway in Santa Fe is her last chance to get a gun ban bill to her desk.
During her State of the State address on Tuesday, Grisham made it clear that a ban on most semi-automatic rifles is among her top priorities for the session, declaring the state needs "to keep fighting the devastating scourge of gun violence with an assault weapons ban and gun dealer accountability," adding that "nobody needs a body-shredding weapon for hunting or self-defense."
If AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles were really capable of shredding a body nobody would be using them to hunt to begin with, unless they want their game pre-minced. What Grisham really means is that she doesn't think New Mexicans should be allowed to purchase the most popular rifle in the United States.
State senators Micaelita Debbie O’Malley, Andrea Romero, and Heather Berghmans have already introduced a bill to carry the governor's poisoned water on the issue. In addition to saddling federally licensed firearm dealers with a number of costly new mandates, including requiring "video recording devices at each point of sale and each entrance and exit to the premises, which shall be recorded from both the indoor and outdoor vantage point," and mandating the dealer maintain two years worth of footage, the bill would prohibit the sale, manufacture, and transfer of "extremely dangerous weapons."
That term encompasses magazines that can hold more than ten rounds of ammunition, .50 caliber ammo and rifles, gas-operated semiautomatic firearms that can accept a detachable magazine, and gas-operated semiautomatic firearms with a fixed magazine that holds more than ten rounds of ammunition.
The governor has said she will give a message to the semiautomatic firearm and standard magazine ban bill that includes a state-owned gun database and regulations on gun stores. This means the bill will be heard this 30-day session.
— NM Shooting Sports Association (@NM_SSA) January 20, 2026
Grisham, who tried (and failed) to ban all concealed carry in Albuquerque through an executive order a couple of years ago, has also failed in previous efforts to enact an "assault weapon" ban, despite Democrats holding a majority in both chambers of the legislature.
Even when Grisham has seen success in pushing her anti-gun agenda, the courts have ruled many of those efforts a violation of our Second Amendment rights. Her edict banning concealed carry was struck down, and more recently the state's 7-day waiting period on gun sales was also halted by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
If Grisham manages to enact her gun ban bill, it too is going to be subject to an immediate court challenge, but New Mexico gun owners should be contacting their representatives and senators now to demand they once again reject the governor's assault on a fundamental civil right. The increased regulations and red tape for gun dealers is bad enough, but prohibiting the sale of some of the most popular firearms in the country is a blatantly unconstitutional infringement on our right to keep and bear arms.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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