Things haven’t been going well for New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham ever since she announced a ban on carrying firearms in Albuquerque a couple of weeks ago. The outcry from people, including some in her own party, began immediately. Lawsuits were filed. And then a judge blocked the ban. One might imagine that she would have begun to get a clue by that point, but apparently not. She turned around after that and issued a new ban that was described as being “scaled back” and is allegedly intended to replace the one that the federal judge blocked. Let’s break out some popcorn and see how this goes. (NY Times)

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico on Friday scaled back a temporary public health order restricting the carrying of firearms in the Albuquerque metro area, limiting a ban to only parks and playgrounds. The initial ban, which was issued Sept. 8 and was to have covered 30 days, had prohibited the carrying of open and concealed firearms in public areas or on state property.

Several individuals and groups had sued to block Ms. Lujan Grisham’s original order, and a federal judge on Wednesday sided with the plaintiffs, who argued that the suspension of gun rights violated the Constitution. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge David Urias granted a temporary restraining order blocking the governor’s suspension. The governor’s most recent executive order essentially replaces the blocked one.

The new order was considerably “scaled back from the original. Instead of the entire county or the entire city, it limited the ban to “public parks or playgrounds, or other public areas provided for children to play in.” This, of course, does nothing to change the issues raised with the original order. She was violating both the federal and specifically her state’s constitutions. Citizens have the right to keep and bear arms to protect themselves. (And in appropriate cases, to protect others.)

People are unfortunately attacked in parks sometimes. Just ask anyone in New York City. That can include children. And in case the Governor hasn’t heard the news, bad people attack schools, including playgrounds. Mass shootings happen. And sometimes, when the police are not there and do not arrive in time, parents or other concerned citizens may need to step in and take action. This ban would once again strip the rights of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves or their children. And for what it’s worth, anyone willing to shoot up a school will be unlikely to be deterred because the Governor issued an order based on a public health emergency. Mass shooters don’t typically seem to be concerned with such things.

That brings us back to the entire “justification” for these attempted bans. Lujan Grisham obviously knows that what she is doing is unconstitutional. But by attempting to declare a public health emergency, she believes that she can bypass the legislature and the courts and make any sort of declaration she sees fit. As the NRA-ILA recently reminded us, the Governor appeared to be telegraphing her intent to use “public health emergencies” in this fashion during remarks she made at a May 5 Johns Hopkins University Public Health Forum.

As some observers have pointed out, Grisham seemed to telegraph her intent to use “public health” as a justification for all manner of government control at the May 5 Johns Hopkins University Health Policy Forum. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is named for former New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who has given over $3 billion to his alma mater. Bloomberg founded the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.

At the forum, Grisham stated, “Everything is a public health issue. Gun violence is a public health issue.”

We were trying to warn people about this during the pandemic when governors and mayors all around the country were using a mostly legitimate public health issue (COVID) to justify executive orders regulating every aspect of people’s lives and restricting many fundamental rights. None of these orders were backed up by legislative action and few received prompt and meaningful attention when challenged in the courts.

This clearly put ideas into the heads of many aspiring autocrats. If the pandemic could be used as a valid excuse to seize that sort of unregulated executive power, what else might be used? Enter Michelle Lujan Grisham. You have the words from her own mouth. “Everything is a public health issue.” And that will soon include climate change, transgenderism, and, of course, racism. This should send chills down your spine, and autocrats like this must be stopped with swift, decisive action by the courts.