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Michelle Lujan Grisham
credit: fox news

I’ll be putting off the usual education article for this week to deal with the latest mini-constitutional crisis in New Mexico. This particular bit of D/S/C lunacy is the direct result, which many predicted due to the Covid decrees, of government abridging citizen’s fundamental rights by means of declaring bogus “public health emergencies.”  It’s easy: declare anything a “public health emergency,” and you can suspend the Constitution for as long as you like for political fun and profit.  That’ll show those God and gun clingers!   Dan Zimmerman at The Truth About Guns, reports:

After an 11-year-old was shot and killed in Albuquerque on Wednesday, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a ‘gun violence public health emergency.’ Just what that would mean in practice wasn’t immediately clear.

As the Governor said in signing the declaration . . .

‘Today, I join the family of an 11-year-old boy in mourning his violent death yesterday. And I mourn the loss of a 5-year-old girl murdered in her bed last month. These are disgusting acts of violence that have no place in our communities. As a mother and grandmother, I cannot fathom the depth of these losses, and their effects will be felt by families, friends and communities forever. I send my most sincere condolences to the loved ones of both of these children.

The time for standard measures has passed. Today I am declaring gun violence a public health emergency in New Mexico.’

Imagine, gentle readers, a governor, or for that matter a mayor, declaring a “public health emergency” that requires the immediate suspension of the First Amendment, so no more free speech, no more freedom of religion, no more right to peacefully assemble to petition government for redress of grievances, and the governor or mayor can and will establish a mandatory state religion, and you begin to be concerned.  But that’s silly; speech has nothing to do with health!  Anyone paying attention knows how often D/S/Cs scream speech they don’t like is “violence,” and causes all manner of “harm.”  Get it?  “Violence and harm” = public health emergency.  Imagine too a mayor or governor declares a “public health emergency” in response to an increase in crime their policies have caused and suspends the Fourth Amendment, so the police can and will search your person, home, or effects at will without cause, and use whatever they find against you in court, and you begin to understand the depth and depravity of Michelle Lujan Grisham.

After what Americans experienced in terms of limits on their rights during similar emergency declarations during the pandemic, it wasn’t unreasonable to expect the Governor would use this new emergency declaration as a pretext for a power-grab and to implement fresh restrictions on New Mexicans’ civil rights.

This evening Governor Grisham did exactly that, exercising the new powers she arrogated to herself the previous day by suspending the Second Amendment right to bear arms in Albuquerque and all of Bernalillo County for the next 30 days.

From kob.com . . .

‘New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham says she is suspending open and concealed carry privileges in public spaces in Albuquerque and throughout Bernalillo County for the next 30 days.

Gov. Lujan Grisham declared gun violence a public health emergency Thursday, following the murder of an 11-year-old boy on his way home from an Isotopes game Wednesday night. That case, combined with several other violent cases involving children, sparked the decision.

The new public health order is effective Friday, Sept. 8. After 30 days, they will evaluate whether they should renew the order or make adjustments.

The public health order is a statewide mandate, but it only suspends open and concealed carry privileges in communities with extremely high violent crime rates and fire-arm related emergency room visits. Right now, that only includes the metro.’

“Privileges.”  The Second Amendment is a fundamental, unalienable right, not a “privilege” such as driving that the government bestows and revokes at whim.  Bruen made this abundantly clear.  In effect, Lujan Grisham suspended the right to self-defense of everyone in Albuquerque, and of anyone that might be passing through or visiting.  Such decrees are the stock in trade of tyrants, not public employees.  And perhaps Lujan Grisham should concentrate on catching and prosecuting criminals, which will tend—gasp!—to reduce crime, even “gun violence,” which is actually—according to her—no different than a a virus.

Likewise, the idea of 30 day reviews is telling the public: “we know criminals won’t obey the law, so in 30 days things will be no better, or probably even worse, so you honest people will just have to suck it up because we’re going to extend the ban on your rights forever, and/or ban more of your rights until criminals who won’t obey the law obey the law and quit committing the crimes we encourage them to commit by disarming you and refusing to prosecute violent criminals.”

The idea the impetus for this bit of despotism had anything to do with public health is likewise outrageous.  The murder of the child is a particularly vile crime–not a disease–but would be no less vile were the child stabbed to death, beaten to death or killed through neglect.  None of those crimes have anything to do with public health.  None, even an actual public health emergency—and I do not include the dictatorial covid response and mandates as a public health emergency—can possibly justify the suspension of any part of the Constitution.  There is not, as yet, a vaccine that protects one from crime, though one can reasonably argue what government did in response to the Covid virus was a crime.

In a follow-up article, Zimmerman notes:

Yesterday the Governor of New Mexico announced an unprecedented ban on both open and concealed carry in Bernalillo County which includes the city of Albuquerque. Clearly aware of the unconstitutional nature of her order, particularly after the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said . . .

‘I welcome the debate and fight about how to make New Mexicans safer.’

She’s about to get that fight. Grisham knew full well that what she’s doing is blatantly unconstitutional and won’t stand up to a court challenge. She just doesn’t care. And she apparently doesn’t see any significant political consequences coming her way as a result.

Need I note Lujan Grisham is a D/S/C?  New Mexico has a recall law, so it’s possible to recall politicians like her who assume Stalin-like powers.  As New Mexico has become something of a purple state, I am not optimistic about the success of a recall vote.  At National Review Charles C.W. Cooke opines:

This is not how the law works in America. As far as I can see, there’s nothing in any New Mexico statute that gives the governor the power to declare an emergency suspending the right to carry, and there’s certainly nothing in the U.S. Constitution that does.

How could any state law bestow such power on a governor?  It would require the ability of any state to override the Constitution.  States may give their citizens more rights than the Constitution, but not fewer.

If our elected officials were allowed to shelve our unalienable rights every time they believed that those rights were being abused by outlaws, then they wouldn’t be unalienable rights; they’d be privileges. Lujan Grisham knows this — which is why she has said not only that she has ‘warned everyone that we expect a direct challenge,’ but that the arrival of such a challenge is ‘the way it should work.’ Those are the words of a person who knows she is breaking the law but has resolved to do it anyway. ‘I have to take a tough direct stand,’ she insists, giving the game away. Actually, she does not. She has to uphold her oath of office.

Nor is Lujan Grisham’s power.  The “way it should work” is not for elected officials to blatantly violate the Constitution or the law and get away with it until someone complains and a court strikes down their lawlessness.  The rule of law works only so long as everyone, including elected officials, voluntarily obeys the law, and is willing to say “I’d like to do X, but that’s against the law, so I won’t even mention it.”  How do we know Lujan Grisham knows it’s against the law?  She said so; she admitted her unlawful decree would be challenged.

Just as bad is that Lujan Grisham does not even believe she’s doing anything useful:

The governor says she doesn’t expect criminals to follow the order. But she hopes it is ‘a resounding message,’ to everyone else in the community to report gun crime.

Honest citizens aren’t making reports when people get shot or killed?  I’d like to see the actual statistics on that, but of course Lujan Grisham isn’t so much as pretending that’s the case.  This is a “public health emergency.”  It’s also a blatantly arrogant case of virtue signaling, or “making a statement”–“sending a resounding message”–rather than trying to pass a law that she knows cannot be legitimately passed.  The “resounding message” is: f**k you.  I can do whatever I want to you and you can’t do “s**t.”

‘The point here is, is that, if everyone did it, and I wasn’t legally challenged, you would have fewer risks on the street, and I could safely say, to every New Mexican, particularly those folks living in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County, I believe that you’re safer for the next 30 days, we have to wait and see,’ said Lujan Grisham.

This is absolute nonsense. Lujan Grisham doesn’t expect criminals to follow her illegal order, but she hopes that it will send a ‘resounding message’? to the people who aren’t criminals, and that this, in turn, will create ‘fewer risks on the street’? What? That — that right there — is the practical problem with almost every gun-control measure that is ever proposed in the United States. It’s almost elegant in its futility. As data from Florida and Texas has shown, carriers [those who carry handguns concealed or openly, not carriers of disease] are between six and seven times more law-abiding than the police. Those people don’t need to be sent a ‘message,’ because they aren’t the problem in the first place [emphasis mine]. The problem — the only problem — is the criminals, the very people whom Lujan Grisham acknowledges will be unaffected by her order. What a mountain of tyrannical stupidity she has built. I expect it to be short-lived.

Final Thoughts:  I suspect (hope?) Cooke is correct and this despotic decree will be quickly struck down.  Sadly, absent being run out of office, Lujan Grisham will pay no price for violating the rights of more than half a million Americans.

Another issue is law enforcement.  Will the Albuquerque police actually arrest people?  Will the county Sheriff’s office do the same?  Police officers have discretion, and may refuse to enforce unconstitutional laws, and certainly may refuse to enforce legislature bypassing, unconstitutional decrees.  Doubtless some officers would be pleased to back Lujan Grisham, but imagine, gentle readers, the animosity that would build against the police, animosity no police agency ever needs, and particularly not in these days of hatred and suppression of the police.  When the police back petty tyrants, citizens begin to wonder who their real enemies are, and start seriously thinking about combatting those enemies.  I’m sure the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration will fully support Lujan Grisham, making enemy identification even easier.

Were one ludicrously generous, one might suppose Lujan Grisham to be acting “for the children,” but that’s the refuge of political scoundrels.  They trot that trope out whenever they’re doing something they know is illegal, immoral and would never pass a sane, law-abiding legislature.  Besides, she’s made her motivations abundantly clear, and they have nothing to do with the welfare of children.  Truly looking out for kids is easy: uphold the Constitution and the rule of law.  Make a future they’d want to live in when they’re old enough to understand the difference between living in a constitutional, representative republic, or “our democracy”–a totalitarian, virtue signaling despotism.

Let’s see: $2 million X 500,000+…

Is Lujan Grisham the new wave?  A generation of D/S/C politicians who believe they need not bother with the Constitution or the rule of law, or just another stupid politician who arrogantly got ahead of her skis?  We’ll see, and the disposition will tell us much about America’s future.

UPDATE, 09-11-23 1030 MT:  It appears Lujan Grisham’s lordly decree isn’t going anywhere.  Albuquerque’s police chief issued a wishy washy statement that indicates the APD is going to be focused on dealing with actual criminals.  The county sheriff’s statement, while not absolutely saying he would not enforce her decree was far stronger than the police chief’s, and made it clear his deputies weren’t playing along.  At least four lawsuits have already been filed to strike the decree down, and apparently pigs are now flying:

When the shrill and annoying David Hogg is actually standing up for the Second Amendment and the Constitution, you know Lujan Grisham stepped in it up to her knee. Even California(?!) D/S/C Senator Ted Lieu has thrown Lujan Grisham under the bus:

And now, the local prosecutor isn’t obeying her majesty:  

On Saturday, Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman made it clear that he will not be enforcing Grisham’s ban on concealed carry. ‘As an officer of the court, I cannot and will not enforce something that is clearly un constitutional,’ Bregman said Saturday.

He added, ‘This office will continue to focus on criminals of any age that use guns in the commission of a crime.’

Which is as it should be.  According to one lawsuit already filed–available here–Lujan Grisham has ordered more or less the entirety of the state Highway Patrol to Albuquerque to enforce her decree.

Everyone knows the queen is wearing no clothing.  More, gentle readers, as it develops.