Penalize criminals, not law-abiding New Mexicans

Enhance punishment for illegal acts, incentivize training and safe storage

This year’s legislative session opened with a flurry of gun bills, which I presume are intended to improve everyone’s safety and reduce gun-related criminal activity. To the sponsors, I’ll credit them with good inclinations but ineffective means.

This imperative must be compared to the impact on lawabiding gun owners. On this test, impact on criminal gun violence will be negligible, while the impact on law-abiding gun owners will be great. Why? Because in the case of a semi-automatic ban, New Mexicans will lose their best tool for self-defense — one that’s been around for about 250 years.

No New Mexican wants to possess a six-shot revolver if they’re accosted by a criminal brandishing an illegal semi-automatic rifle with a 50-round drum magazine and suppressor. When confronted by a violent offender, legislators should want their constituents to be able to protect themselves and their families with the best equipment they can afford until law enforcement arrives. Any argument claiming “public safety” is so nebulous it must be discarded. In the real world, what counts is can a law-abiding New Mexican defend and prevail against an armed criminal? With this view, these bills tip the advantage to the criminal and away from the constituent.

Instead, legislators should prioritize the ability for constituents to defend themselves and their families and penalize the criminal use of the subjects they seek to regulate in the form of enhancement penalties.

For example, an armed robbery with an AR-15, a 50-round drum magazine, a suppressor and a fully automatic conversion kit should be dealt with much more severely as the same armed robbery with a six-shot revolver, perhaps enhancing the sentence two or three times. With this approach, law-abiding gun owners have little to nothing to oppose because as long as they don’t commit a criminal action, they can continue owning, acquiring and legally using their semi-automatics, magazines and suppressors.

And since some of these bills concern “safety,” rather than coerce behavior, nudge it. Why doesn’t the state incentivize, perhaps in the form of tax credits or partial or full reimbursement, for gun owners to buy gun safes? Why don’t legislators craft bills allowing gun owners to write off 100% of range fees and training classes? Training is essential for a firearms owner, but it can be expensive — legislators can step in with bills that make firearms training free or nearly so. And why isn’t there a state public education campaign to educate about firearms safety, the value of training, and such?

This last approach is reminiscent of our approach to the war on drugs. For a time, we fought that war only with legislation and law enforcement. Then, there came an acceptance law alone can’t obliterate illegal drugs, so public education campaigns, decriminalization and other methods (such as free syringes) appeared. This same acceptance needs to occur for guns.

The Holy Grail is to reduce criminal gun use as far as possible without endangering the safety of New Mexicans who want a firearm for self-defense and without infringing on their Second Amendment rights to acquire one. This requires recognition firearms are here to stay, and escalating enhancements to disincentivize use in criminal ventures, an incentive campaign to encourage firearmsowning citizens to attend regular training, and a public education campaign to demystify guns and encourage proper gun use.