Back in business. Yay!
The Associated Press is reporting that New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, has suspended legal open and concealed carry of firearms across Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least 30 days.
The firearms suspension, classified as an emergency public health order, applies to open and concealed carry in most public places, from city sidewalks to urban recreational parks. The restriction is tied to a threshold for violent crime rates currently only met by the metropolitan Albuquerque. Police and licensed security guards are exempt from the temporary ban.
Cue the screaming and outrage from the Right.
Gov. Lujan Grisham cited several recent incidents of gun violence for her decision.
Lujan Grisham referenced several recent shootings in Albuquerque in issuing the order. Among them was a suspected road rage shooting Wednesday outside a minor league baseball stadium that killed 11-year-old Froyland Villegas and critically wounded a woman as their vehicle was peppered with bullets while people left the game.
Last month, 5-year-old Galilea Samaniego was fatally shot while asleep in a motor home. Four teens entered the mobile home community in two stolen vehicles early on Aug. 13 and opened fire on the trailer, according to police. The girl was struck in the head and later died at a hospital.
The governor also cited an August shooting death in Taos County of 13-year-old Amber Archuleta. A 14-year-old boy shot and killed the girl with his father’s gun while they were at his home, authorities said.
“When New Mexicans are afraid to be in crowds, to take their kids to school, to leave a baseball game — when their very right to exist is threatened by the prospect of violence at every turn — something is very wrong,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement.
This was a gutsy move on the governor’s part. I don’t know that gun violence has ever been declared an official public health threat, although the American Medical Association said it was back in 2016. And the violence has gotten worse since. It will be interesting to see if there is less gun violence in Albuquerque over the thirty days. I expect that this will be challenged in court somewhere.
Jonathan Turley, still challenging Alan Dershowitz for the irritating right-wing attorney gadfly award, predicts the governor will be hit with a massive backlash, and that the suspension will increase support for open and concealed carry. I don’t have a feel for politics in New Mexico.
But what if there is no backlash? There is copious polling telling us that a majority of Americans really, truly want more restrictions on guns, not less. What if the governor pays no political penalties at all? Maybe more politicians will get some guts. Maybe the nation will no longer be hostage to the gun fetishists. This is worth watching;
In other news: This is a story about Elon Musk that would be getting more attention.
Overnight we finally got confirmation of something that has long been suspected or hinted at but which none of the players had an interest in confirming. Last September Musk either cut off or refused to activate his Starlink satellite service near the Crimean coast during a surprise Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian Navy at anchor at its Sevastopol naval port.
Ukraine has made extensive use of naval drones. But it at least sounds like this was supposed to be a massed attack that would have done extensive damage to the Russian Navy and the naval port itself and thus seriously degraded Russia’s ability to launch missile attacks against Ukraine. In other words, it doesn’t sound like this was just any attack, though the details are sketchy.
On its face you might say, they’re Musk’s satellites and he’s in charge of who gets to use them and how. But of course it’s not that simple. It’s a good illustration of how Musk’s economic power has crept into domains that are more like the power of a state.
It’s worth reading the whole post, by Josh Marshall at TPM.