New Mexico's "assault weapon ban" bill wasn't anything of the sort. It was really a semi-auto long gun ban, for all practical purposes, and it was going to be challenged the moment it was signed into law.
And it was very likely the challenge would win, because holy crap, that was beyond anything Bruen said was good to go.
Hell, even at least one anti-gun group head knew where this was going to go and said it would likely be overturned by the Supreme Court.
The rest of her fellow travelers weren't that realistic, though, and are now very upset that lawmakers in the Land of Enchantment weren't all that enchanted with the ban.
Supporters of a bill banning certain types of semiautomatic weapons and adding new regulations for firearms dealers blasted the New Mexico House of Representatives for what they called its "shameful refusal" to advance the measure during the 30-day session.
In a statement issued Friday, New Mexico Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action condemned the chamber for the demise of Senate Bill 17, which passed the Senate but stalled in the House Judiciary Committee in the final days of the session that ended Thursday.
"House lawmakers failed at their most fundamental duty: protecting the lives of kids like me desperate to grow up without the fear of gunfire ringing out at any moment," November Rowe, a volunteer leader with the Sandia High School Students Demand Action group, said in a statement. "If the House thinks we’ll go away because the session is over, they’ve grossly underestimated our fury. We are the ones ducking for cover, and we will be the ones at the ballot box."
Cheryl Haase of the New Mexico chapter of Moms Demand Action accused the House of playing "political games" with New Mexicans' lives amid ongoing deadly gun violence.
"Our state has the third highest gun death rate in the country and House lawmakers responded by abdicating any responsibility to address the gun trafficking supply chain that is fueling gun violence and they failed to get assault weapons off our streets," Haase said in a statement. "Our communities deserve leaders who will put public safety first — not cowards who hide behind the clock and table life-saving legislation."
Life-saving legislation, is it?
Hammers are used to kill people more often than AR-15s. The worst school shooting in modern American history was at Virginia Tech, where the bad guy used a couple of handguns. If would-be mass shooters cannot get the AR-15s that the media told them were murder-death-kill machines and what all the cool mass shooters are using, what do you think they'll turn to?
They're not going to give up their homicidal dreams, mind you.
They're going to switch to something else, like a handgun or two.
So yeah, there was nothing life-saving about this bill.
It was, however, a massive infringement on the right of the people to keep and bear arms, though. It checked all the boxes on that one.
So yeah, folks like Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action are big mad that lawmakers didn't see things their way, because they can't imagine anyone disagreeing with them on anything.
Well, they can stay mad, because for at least one more year, New Mexico has refused to pass this kind of nonsense legislation.
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