New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s efforts to ban the carrying of firearms in Albuquerque got off to a rocky start and it’s only gone downhill from there. First, law enforcement officials in the region declared that they wouldn’t enforce the ban. Constitutional scholars from across the country weighed in, calling the order a non-starter. And now a federal judge has blocked the ban. The order from U.S. District Court Judge David Urias seemed to do little more than echo what everyone else has been saying. The ban runs afoul of the federal Constitution, New Mexico’s state constitution, and a recent Supreme Court ruling. Adding insult to injury, Urias is a Biden appointee. (Reuters)

A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked a ban on carrying guns in New Mexico’s largest city after the order by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham threw the state into the center of the U.S. gun-rights debate.

U.S. District Court Judge David Urias said the governor’s 30-day suspension of concealed and open firearm carry rights in Albuquerque and its surrounding county went against a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that people had a right to carry a gun outside their homes for self defense.

“They just want the right to carry their guns,” Urias, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, said of plaintiffs requesting a temporary restraining order on parts of Lujan Grisham’s Sept. 8 emergency public health order.

This ruling isn’t likely to change much since nearly everyone seemed to be ignoring the Governor’s ban anyway. For her part, Lujan Grisham seemed to be trying to paint the ruling as some sort of a moral victory because she was bringing more attention to the subject. She said, “Over the past four days, I’ve seen more attention on resolving the crisis of gun violence than I have in the past four years.” That may be true, but it appears that almost all of the attention was focused on stopping you, Governor.

The backlash against this ban was at least partially bipartisan in nature. Even some of the Governor’s fellow Democrats objected, saying that she had gone too far. In this regard, we can see some parallels to other contentious topics. Liberals worry that conservatives are always saying that Democrats don’t just want “common-sense limits” on gun rights, they want to ban them completely. And then Michelle Lujan Grisham turns around and proves them right. Abortion activists claim that the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe wasn’t simply a return of the decision to the states. The Republicans were secretly planning a national ban on nearly all procedures. And (of course) we had some Republicans in Congress dutifully showing up and proposing precisely that. You can see the pattern.

What the courts seem unlikely to address is the broad use and abuse of executives issuing states of emergency, particularly when such orders are cloaked in the premise of a public health emergency. People being shot is a public health emergency. The migrant invasion is a public health emergency. Open-air drug use is a public health emergency. Shall we have a patchwork of executive orders all over the country for all of these things?

I somehow doubt that this question is going to show up at the Supreme Court. For one thing, we don’t have conflicting judicial rulings for them to sort out. Also, the ban was only supposed to run for 30 days, so unless the Governor is silly enough to try to extend it under these conditions, the question will be moot in a couple of weeks. Further, would anyone really ask the Supremes to rule in their favor on something they so recently ruled against? This entire exercise feels like little more than a way for Lujan Grisham to generate some headlines and gin up the gun control debate again. In that, she may have at least partially succeeded, but she clearly didn’t find much support for her plan, even at home among her own supposed allies.