September 12, 2023 • 38 mins
Robert sits down with Lucas Herndon, a New Mexico-based activist, to talk about his governor's new unconstitutional gun carry ban and why murder in Albuquerque is up 50%
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome everyone back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast
about things falling apart, and sometimes stuff that's slightly less
depressing than that, but not today. Today we're talking about
the falling apart sort of thing and our continuing coverage
of what we like to call the crumbles. Here today
leads us to a little state called New Mexico, and
(00:27):
specifically a little city in New Mexico called Albuquerque. If
you have been kind of casually skimming the news about
the American Southwest, you might be aware that the governor
of New Mexico has recently announced a ban on citizens
carrying openly or concealed with a license, firearms within the
(00:50):
county that contains Albuquerque. The justification for this is a
recent surge in gun violence in the state, most of
which is centered on Albuquerque. And this is there's a
been a pretty over the last specifically the last year,
a pretty dramatic increase in the number of shootings from
(01:11):
twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two. The number of
shootings in Albuquerque, or murders, I should say, most of
which are shootings, also about eighty four percent. The number
of murders in Albuquerque almost doubled. I think it's and
I think still you know, it's gone down a little
bit this year, but there's still about fifty percent higher
than the normal rate. Now, as you might guess from
(01:34):
the fact that you've probably watched Breaking Bad fifteen years
ago or whatever, the drug trade, drug trafficking, drug deals
gone bad have something to do with this. But I
think this year about seventeen something like that, seventeen twenty
percent of the homicides in Albuquerque are drug related, but
a much higher number above seventy percent. The police have
(01:55):
given the sort of kind of primary cause as individual
dis respect. Now what does that mean, Well, it means
kind of what you think of it. People getting into
shit with each other and somebody pulls a gun.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
A lot of these have been traffic related, and in fact,
the shooting that kind of most directly inspired the governor's
controversial legal measure was a road rage incident. About what
was this, Yeah, on September ninth, I think it was.
An eleven year old boy was shot and killed in
(02:29):
a road rage incident as his family was leaving a
minor league baseball game. It looks like his aunt cut
off another driver. The driver followed them and fired seventeen
shots into the car. The eleven year old boy was
killed and his aunt is still in the hospital in
unstable condition at least last I checked after this shooting.
(02:53):
And this is, by the way, you know, prior to this,
there was another case where a little kid, I think
a four year old was killed in another road rage
shooting incident. We don't know who shot the kid in
this instance. We don't know if it was a for example,
a citizen legally carrying a firearm or somebody. Although in
the state of New Mexico you are allowed to carry
(03:14):
a loaded firearm in your vehicle. You're not allowed to
walk around with it concealed without a license, but you're
allowed to conceal it in your vehicle. The shooting that
preceded this one, the road raid shooting, wasn't illegal shooting.
It was because the guy was a drug dealer. He
had illegal drugs on him, all that stuff. But yeah,
it's messy. So really, in response to the governor's proclamation,
(03:38):
there have been quite a bit of people have gotten angry,
in part because the Supreme Court ruled fairly recently that
you have a right to carry a concealed firearm. There
are some barrier states can set up in terms of licensing,
but you can't stop people from carrying, like you have
to have a legal avenue for people to carry concealed firearms.
That's something that the Supreme Court has said you have
(03:59):
a right to do, and governors do not have the
right to overrule that sort of thing on public health grounds.
So this has become an increasingly contentious issue. We're going
to talk about some of the things that have followed
from this, but I want to bring on our source
for the day, Lucas Herndon. Lucas is a New Mexico
based activist, someone we've had on the show before as
(04:22):
well as a gun owner. Lucas, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Thanks Robert. Good to be back, sort of as always.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a messy one.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Yeah. So that was a good a good summary of
what got us here this The the executive order was
dropped Friday afternoon, and I immediately went to my work
chat and said, hold on, y'all, this is going to
(04:53):
be a wild weekend. And as you can imagine, it was.
There has been incredible responses for sort of everybody on
to sort of Yeah, despite political ideologies, the responses have
been swift and ranging in their loudness, let's say, and
(05:15):
it's created a yeah, national buzz. A number of right
wing talking heads from the state have now you know,
been brought into national talking spaces. We have seen the
news bounce around the far right blogosphere and you know,
it's made it to Alex Jones and that kind of ilk.
(05:37):
But then, of course, you know, and so obviously there's
the there's that far end of the spectrum, and you know,
then there's the response here in the state, which is
you know, ranging from supportive, too indifferent, to angry to
all you know, all the different things you can think of.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, one of the things people may be kind of
confused about this. One of the things that's problematic about
this is specifically the fact that it is restricting citizens
who have concealed carryer permits from continuing to carry in
the county. States have a right to at least currently
the Supreme Court has not you know, ruled counter to that.
Currently have a right to restrict people from open carrying,
(06:14):
and you have a right to restrict people from doing
stuff like have unlicensed carrying a handgun in your car right.
In the state of Oregon, for example, you cannot carry
a loaded weapon in your vehicle without a concealed carry permit.
As far as I'm aware, there's not been any sort
of constitutional challenge to that. There may be in the future,
but the Supreme Court, you know, has ruled very differently
(06:34):
on the issue of concealed firearms, and so that's a
problem because, you know, regardless of what you think about
how the law on concealed carry of firearms should be,
the idea of a governor overturning a right like that,
access to a right like that based on what they
call the public health emergency is deeply concerning, you know,
(06:56):
which is why you had, you know, a surprising people
come out against this, including David who's one of the
Parkland kids, and a gun control advocate who said, you know,
the govenor simply doesn't have the right to do this,
which is kind of more or less where I land.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Yeah, and you know, and just to just to be clear, right,
I'm I'm not an attorney, but I am a gun
owner and have exercised that right since I was legally
allowed to do so at eighteen, which was very long ago.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
At this point.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
So, yeah, I've been I have been a New Mexico
gun owner paying attention to things and how those laws
affect me for quite a while. One of the yeah,
one of the interesting things about the executive order, and
you sort of touched on it, is that the in
the in the order, it specifically limits having a firearm
(07:47):
in your vehicle to traveling to any excluded place that
she listed in the executive order. Right, so there's there's
a there's a ban on you know, carrying unless you're
going to like X, wire Z specific places, and that
then is furthered that you can only have a firearm
in your vehicle if you're traveling to one of the
(08:07):
said places. So yeah, that's that is in direct contradiction
to existing law because New Mexico, ostensibly your home or
your car is an extension of your home. You don't
there is there there basically is no law about having
a car a firearm in your car, which has led
(08:32):
to some weird things because so, for instance, you can
get a dui on a bicycle and so that law
has actually been used that you can carry a concealed
firearm like in a backpack on a bicycle. But the
second you step off the bicycle. Now you're in violation
of the law unless you have a permit. So, you know,
those specific pieces of gun law and her executive order,
(08:54):
even in the state, are at odds let alone whatever
the maybe you know, the implications.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Are yeah, and I think you know. One of the
things that is kind of concerning about this to me
is and that should be concerning about this people, is
that I don't see how I can see an argument
for saying we want to restrict the unlicensed carry of
firearms in vehicles, right, because a significant number of these
(09:22):
shootings seem to have involved that. Although it is a
little bit unclear. We don't know who carried out the
most recent road raid shooting, so we don't know if
that person was legally allowed to possess a firearm. Right,
we know that in at least one of the recent
shootings that killed a kid, the person was you know,
had a dealing amount and what appeared to be a
dealing like a setup of you know, it was parceled
(09:45):
out into baggies marijuana on him, which is illegal. I'm
not making a moral statement about that. I don't think
it should be illegal to but it is. It is illegal,
right Like, he was not carrying within the bounds of
federal law. But restricting people from carrying licensed concealed hand
guns does not seem I mean, number one, I haven't
seen evidence that like that's a major driver of gun violence.
(10:07):
But number two, if a decent number of these shootings
are people acting outside of the bounds of the law,
which they appear to be, I don't see how restricting
people from lawfully carrying a weapon is something that can
that's going to make the problem better, right Like, it
seems like you're kind of striking at this in an
(10:29):
ineffective way that's going to galvanize resistance to any kind
of gun control, as opposed to going out with kind
of a more limited and surgical approach to try and
actually tackle the causes of the problem.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
I mean, I think one of the reasons why being
on your show to talk about this is worth thinking about.
The last time I was on was, you know, earlier
in the year when we discovered that there was a
GOP operative who had committed acts of violence in the
form of shooting at democrats elected Democrats up in the
(11:06):
Bernoleo County area as an act of political violence. And
worth thinking about is that, you know, he was charged
with firing a firing a firearm from a moving vehicle,
which is a crime, like it's it's a specific crime,
which and also like very valid crime. You should not
(11:28):
be you should never shoot from a moving vehicle. Like
that's correct, that's so the right, so we you know
again yeah again not a lawyer, however, it seemed duplicative
to have a law on the books that already there
it is a crime to fire your gun from a
car already h and people who have, people who have
(11:52):
committed heinous acts of violence by violating that law could
be and should be charged under that law. First of all,
let me just say, like if we believe in a
car serial state, because that's a whole.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Other moral question.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
However, for the purposes of this conversation, however, if somebody
is just driving down the street and has a gun
in their car, does that create you know, are they
are you know, are they committing a crime that feels
conflicting and harmful?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, And it's you know, as you there's a couple
of things we should talk about here. I think one
of them is what I what I consider to be
a kind of a dishonest anti gun control argument that
comes out from time to time, which is the idea
that you shouldn't restrict access. You can't restrict access to
firearms because criminals won't obey those laws. It's true, criminals
(12:44):
don't obey like people who are committing gun crimes are
not obeying the law. By definition, they're people who are
committing gun crimes. But increased availability access to firearms makes
it easier for people who are going to be bad
actors to acquire fire arms. Right, Regardless of what you
think the legal remedy to that situation is, that is
(13:04):
a pretty undeniable situation. I consider this to be quite different,
because what you are saying in this instance is we
are restricting We have people who are not acting legally
with firearms they already own. So we are going to
restrict people who are acting within the bounds of the
law with firearms they own from from behaving in a
certain way, which I have a serious issue with. But
(13:26):
I do think that there is a difference, you know,
between those two kind of situations on a pretty fundamental level.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Yeah, I would agree, and and and the disingenuous knee
jerk response from the far right over this, while completely expected,
that's exactly what you know, that's exactly what they're doing, right,
They're equating this ill informed, uh poorly worded however you
(13:52):
want to say, they're they're they're taking this thing and
using it as a pretense for all their uh far
right propaganda extremes, you know, calling to impeach the governor
because she's you know, intending to violate the constitution or
some silliness like that, which is yeah, which is just yeah,
(14:13):
it's that's just far right conspiracy manstormation, in my.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Opinion, and it has galvanized them. Right, there's been an
open carry protests already, and the sheriff saying or one
of the sheriffs in the area saying like, I'm not
going to we will not be enforcing this law.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Well and and yeah, and I think that that's actually
maybe something that for this podcast and for for your audience,
for those longtime listeners who who followed this show, that
to me is actually one of the most maybe interesting
and like crumbles oriented parts of this Yes, yes, absolutely, yeah,
so yeah. So yesterday, the Bernoleo County sheriff, who is
(14:54):
an elected official and it is his County that the
that this executive order effects, came out and said that
he would not enforce it. He said that the uh
he'd got he'd barely gotten a heads up from the governor,
but he did admit that. You know, she she sort
of like reached out to him, said hey, I'm gonna
do this thing. I know you probably won't agree, and
(15:16):
he's like, yeah, I don't agree, and she's like, okay,
well we'll figure it out.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
And he was like, okay, I guess we will anyway.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Yeah, So this he came out, made this announcement he's
not going to enforce it. The the chief of police
from the Albuquerque Department has more or less made the
same intonation, with support from the very progressive Democratic mayor
of Albuquerque, who hasn't necessarily outright said he disagrees, but
(15:45):
has said that he's more concerned about his officer's safety.
And that brings up an interesting point that like, oh yes,
like like cops trying to enforce this law like that
sounds like a recipe for disaster, which is which is
why you didn't see any cops in we're seeing the.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
The order at the protest on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, and it is one of those like why why
would you write like that's such a yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
So the most recent thing this afternoon is that the
the state's attorney attorney general, whose whose job it is
to defend the state or you know, officers of the state,
has announced that he will not defend the governor in
his official capacity from the three current lawsuits that have
already been filed since Friday. So so yeah, there there
(16:38):
basically seems to be this complete lack of support from
the from the parts of government that are supposed to
do the things you know, yeah, and and you know,
it begs the yeah, it for those of us that
think about these things, it begs the question of, yeah,
(16:59):
how far does this go? What is the next you
know thing that a sitting governor attempts to pass using
administrative power and then isn't enforced And what does that mean?
And how do we care about this one but not
other things or you know whatever. So those are those
are the questions that that we're all asking ourselves here
in New Mexico, And as somebody who works in this
(17:20):
field professionally, like we've spent a lot of time in
the last forty eight hours, like asking ourselves those questions.
It's tough, it's there, there is a there isn't an
easy answer on this one.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
And this is something by the way, that is I
think pretty directly relevant to everybody listening because one of
the stories probably under reported stories. We've talked about it
from time to time here, you know, it was something
that kind of was was in the DNA of the
original you know, run of it could happen here, but
probably we could stand to talk about it lot more
(18:00):
is the rise of most common term these guys use
for themselves as constitutional sheriffs, right, And there is this
this is a long standing belief on the far right.
It comes out of really the seventies and eighties is
when a lot of this stuff started cooking. But this
belief that has kind of formed over you know, particularly
the last twenty years, that the sheriff constitutionally is the
(18:23):
highest law of the land, basically, right. And so you
can have sheriffs who refuse to particularly and this is
where it comes in, most often refuse to enforce gun
control laws, right. And this has sort of You've got
a lot you know, a lot of some of this
came got sort of like mixed in with a lot
(18:44):
of the election bullshit on the right, where like you
had a lot of sheriffs, you know, there was a
lot of concern as to how they would respond to
states and the federal government sort of enforcing, you know,
or stopping, you know, the Trump administration from doing some
certain things around the counting of votes. You know, there
(19:05):
was a lot of real concern about that. And I
think this is something that is going to continue to
be more and more of a problem because a lot
of these sheriffs departments are completely out of fucking pocket,
right these are And by the way, with sheriff departments,
not that being part of a police hierarchy in a
traditional sense provides much restraint. But sheriffs are completely fucking
(19:28):
out there right like they are there are not It
does vary from state to state, but there's not any
sort of like central requirement about like what it takes
to be a sheriff or a sheriff's deputy. A lot
of them are just dudes, right, Like That's why you
had it was either in New Mexico or Arizona, like
a small sheriff's department basically selling to like celebrities, you
can become a sheriff's deputy here like work a week
(19:50):
and a year and then you can carry a concealed
handgun wherever because cops get that, right, you know, right, Like, yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Yeah, So I just want to be clear because what
you're talking about and how it pertains to New Mexico
is both one hundred percent correct and has and has
and has happened here.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
It could happen here.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
But is uh but in the case of this issue
right now, Yeah, Bernoleo County Sheriff took office this year.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
He is a Democrat. He's a man of color. Uh not.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
This is not me making excuses for cops because but
I just to be clear about this. And he is
generally disliked by the right and has been seen as
you know whatever, soft on crime and stuff, which he
hates and has tried He's tried real hard to sort
of buck that position, and and so and and that,
(20:45):
which which makes this all the maybe worse, right that that, Yeah,
a Democrat elected in a democratic county with a you know,
the city, the state's largest democratic municipality, right Like, for
that guy to be like, yeah, I'm not gonna I'm
not gonna do this, and and I also there's something
(21:06):
that needs to be said here. You you cited some great,
well tragic statistics about my state and specifically about Albuquerque earlier.
And and this is a public health crisis, right gotten
by absolutely yeah, it's out.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
When you're seeing the number of homicides basically double, you
know in the space of a fucking year, that that
is a that's a crist Something needs to be done right.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Right right.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
And and so one of one of one of the
big things that hasn't I don't think been said loud
enough is that if if we you know, you know,
if we all agree that it is a crisis, a
thirty day ban is not gonna it's not gonna do anything,
and it's certainly not going to address the root causes.
(21:53):
And I actually, very reluctantly have to hand it to
the sheriff for his statements yesterday, because, as he put it,
he has enough crime to deal with.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
He's not enough going on that.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
His deputies have to have to deal with right now
to then go and enforce this arbitrary rule or you
know order. It's not a it's not a lot, it's
but you know what I mean. So so that's another thing, right,
like this is your You're we're dealing with a public
health crisis by putting the impetus on law enforcement, which
(22:28):
is the whole problem with you know, the way that
this country deals with, you know, the the quote unquote
drug problem. And and let's be very clear here, when
the governor issued her order on Friday, she issued two orders.
One is called uh the one with the one with
dealing with guns, is declaring state of public Health Emergency
(22:49):
due to gun violence. But at the same time, she
issued one saying declaring State of Public Health Emergency due
to drug abuse. And there, you know, for her, these
things are related, and she's you know, she's trying to
time together. And I think we all know that given
the last forty years of American history dealing with drugs
(23:12):
via you know, law enforcement has not done anything to
help the problem. And so that it just again, this
is one of those things where it feels counterintuitive for
a governor who you know, generally the Democrats of this
state support, who has won by fairly large margins in
(23:33):
both of her elections and and has a Democratic majority
in her legislature, that for her then to issue this
order and put more requirements on her law enforcement that
she's expecting to you know, also then carry. It just
doesn't it doesn't make sense, right, And so that's where
(23:54):
we're all scrambling.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
It's it's there's a couple of things that make this
so dangerous. One is that it's this unnecessary own goal, right,
you know, as you stated, this is not this and
I didn't want to be sort of intimating that he
was that this sheriff is not particularly tied in directly
to some of these longer standing weird constitutional sheriff things,
but it does tie into this this pattern of sort
(24:21):
of conservatives backing sheriffs against like state power and against
federal power that they dislike. And in this case one
of the things that makes this so toxic is they
have a point, right, this this order is not constitutional,
and giving them ammunition like that is number one. It
strengthens right wing organizing in a way that is you know, dangerous,
(24:44):
but also it's completely unnecessary, it's completely it does not
address the problem, and the problem is is very like,
extremely serious, and so I find this kind of distracting
from realistic solutions here, you know, which, which, by the way,
can you know, probably do to some extent involve restricting
(25:06):
you know, uh certain the ability of people to carry
in certain situations, to carry in certain ways in certain situations.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
I think one of them.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Yeah, oh yeah, no, no, you have well, I was
just gonna I just want to, you know, for for
folks interested in, you know, what New Mexico has done.
Things that have happened in the under this administration, are
there are There have been some advancements that as a
gun owner I support. One was closing private sales as
a thing. You know, I grew up buying guns out
(25:36):
of the backs of cars. Uh wild, I have some
wild stories about that, but that was a fully legal
thing to do.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
We had private sales in this in the state. I've
got a lot of car guns up. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah, And it is fun, but we should probably probably,
that's not probably, This should be probably, and especially and
especially for those of us that don't have anything restricting
us from by purchasing firearms, there's no reason to not
just do anyway. So that being said, so the New
(26:11):
Mexico did end private sales, so that's one thing. And
then this last year we instituted It's not a full
safe storage law, but it goes a long way instituting
a safe storage law. It specifically creates a situation where
if a minor gets access to a gun that was
(26:32):
not secured and then commits a crime with it, then
the owner of that firearm is then held liable. And
it has been used now twice and two fairly high
profile tragic shootings in the state. I should note here
a decent number of the recent spike and homicides have
been children getting access to firearm zoned by adults, either
(26:55):
accidentally or purposefully using them to shoot and kill people. Right, yeah,
so yeah, the law, the laws. The law is called
the Benny Hargrove Act, which was named in honor of
a of a young man who was killed at a
middle school by a fellow middle schooler with a gun
that the guy got off of. You know that the
kid got out of a you know, a bedside drawer.
(27:17):
And uh yeah, And as again, as a firearm owner,
like I'm sitting across from my safe right now, I
keep my guns locked up.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
So there are there are practical solutions.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Here, yes, And and I know that this country has
a hard time talking about guns without it getting out
of pocket very quickly, But there are practical solutions we have.
You know, one of the interesting responses from Democratic lawmakers
in the state over the last you know, three days
has been a call for a special session of our
(27:49):
legislature to discuss what some of those things might be.
The trouble with that is that in everybody's got this
like knee jerk thing and everybody wants to talk about crime.
I'm using big air quotes crime, tim and and which
is in direct counter you know, counterance to the idea
that this is a public health crisis. So you know,
we have a lot of reservations about what what might
(28:13):
come out of a session like that. We would have
to do a lot of work to protect you know,
some of the things we've we've you know, we've done
a lot to protect people from the car cerial system
in this state, which is hell a predatory, and so
those are protections we want to keep, you know, keep
in place. But it's easy for the right of course
(28:35):
to blame like that's the reason the reason, the reason
why shootings have increased is because we let people who've
been arrested for you know, petty theft or something out
of out of jail, and for some reason, that's why
crime is up. I don't know, it doesn't make sense,
but anyway, so you know, it's even even with the
(28:55):
solutions come more problems. But but yeah, there does seem
to be the unintended consequences of this order seem to
be the not just the backlash, but then the sort
of non support from folks who would otherwise be supporting her.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
So I kind of want to close, probably by talking
about thank you for that, by the way, for that
context for talking about what I think is the underlying
a big part of the underlying cause you that is
(29:33):
also a big part of a surgeon violence in a
number of states nationwide, which is that like people are
a lot of a significant chunk of this country has
become unhinged since COVID. I kind of suspect that has
a lot to do with it. But you are seeing
in a number of states a significant amount of like
(29:54):
anti social violence, violence that occurs because somebody cut somebody
off in traffic, somebody gets into an argument at a store,
you know, somebody gets into an argument at a parking lot.
There have been a number of shootings as a result
of this. It's happened. You know, this is a big
part of the rise and gun violence in Texas, which
is also tied I think, to permitless carry to an extent,
(30:16):
but like it is broader than that too, Right, this
is not purely an access to guns, is why a
lot of these crimes involved guns. But there's just been
this rise in anti social violence, a lot of which
comes out of arguments or perceived disrespect between one person
and a group of people or two people or whatever.
And I think this is probably tied into with a
(30:39):
lot of the you know, increase in political violence we've seen,
because a decent amount of it does arise out of that.
And this is part of what I think is kind
of disheartening about the governor's response here, is that this
is a very serious problem and the kind of knee
jerk reactions don't help it. But also like I don't
know what does right. You can deal with the aspects
(31:01):
of this problem, Right, maybe if people aren't just able
to throw a gun in their pants and legally be carrying,
there will be less of these shootings, but that doesn't
deal with all of the underlying problem. And I don't
really know what does This kind of like increased willingness
of Americans to resort to violence in interpersonal conflicts is
(31:25):
a real issue.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Yeah, oh man, you said, yeah, I think that, you know,
I'm thinking of I'm thinking about the first time I
was able to go to a school function of my
daughters after after COVID orders were lifted. And I remember
(31:49):
I was was with a family member and they were,
you know, they were the commenting on sort of people's
bad behavior in the auditorium, and you know, and I
had to find them.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I was like, you know, the.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
These people have not been outside, yeah, in a year
and a half. And you know, and like specifically, like
some of these little kids that are running around, they
they maybe have never been to a function like this,
you know what I mean. Like by the time, by
the time most three or four year olds have are
going to I don't know, like a baseball game or
(32:23):
a band concert, you know, they've at some point it's
the first time, but you know, they get used to it,
they start to understand the rules of things. But yeah,
like after you know, if you grow up and you're
all of a sudden, you're five and you've never been
to something like this, like you don't know, you're supposed
to sit down and be quiet, listen to the thing right,
like you're just sitting on your phone anyway. So yeah, yeah,
I definitely agree with you. I think in New Mexico
(32:45):
we're not isolated from other states in the sense that
we have arise in drug use and related crime. We're
not isolated in the sense we have a rise in
you know, our houseless population, in lack of job or
at least good job, and and all of those things
come together to make life hard, you know, and when
(33:06):
life is hard, it it impacts people and they make,
you know, bad decisions. The thing that I think does
hurt New Mexico and and and is maybe what makes
New Mexico unfortunately sort of stand out from some of
its issues is, you know, we are a very rural state.
We have one fairly large city in Albuquerque, but even then,
(33:30):
the surrounding parts of Albuquerque, just like the rest of
the state, are very rural, and there's a certain amount
of you know, we just as a state, we are
lacking resources and always have, you know, we rely so
heavily on one industry and without without the systems in
place to ensure that people have a place to live
(33:50):
or you know, a meal, to get a job, to
go to recreation that they can afford things like that.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
I mean, it is tough. It is just tough out there.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
And I'm I'm privileged and I get to you know,
I I'm raising my daughter in a home that you know,
we want for very little. But I see it even
in my in my peer group, I see people who
are struggling all the time, and yeah, it's just tough
out there, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
It is, it is.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
And I honestly, you know, New Mexico and Oregon are
similar in a lot of ways, and that they're both
very low popular. I think we're both at around four
million people if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Oh New Mexico is only like two million.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Oh you're two millions. So yeah, even even less so
low population states that have one big city that kind
of dominates politics, but a very conservative kind of rural
area in a lot of ways outside of that. And
in both cases, that urban area has seen recent massive
spikes in interpersonal violence and in you know, fatal issues
due to drug use. Right now, one of the things, obviously,
(34:53):
one of the things Oregon has coming through it is
because of all of the retire recent stuff here, like
a much higher tax base, right so there's theoretically more resources,
although I tend to argue very incompetently applied, so most
of us don't actually get out, but you do. You
do have this kind of this This is one of
these places where this urban rural divide is is both
(35:13):
a lot stricter and where this state that is the
majority of the population and is dealing with such severe
issues is also kind of the political center or this
this city is also the political center of the state. Well, yeah,
that and and just yeah, you absolutely hit on something there.
You know, Albuquerque has been historically you know, decentralized due
(35:36):
to gentrification for the last generation because of exactly what
you said, which is that retirement community, you know, outside
of oil and gas, and then the federal government in
terms of like the labs and the universities and things
like that, Like retirees are basically our third general you know,
generative revenue. Agriculture probably in there too, but you know what,
(35:59):
you give what I'm saying, they're a very high portion.
And yeah, and and you know the Albuquerque that I
grew up, going to visit all of my family in
and like going you know, going downtown, going you know,
down to the international district going near the university. You know,
it never felt it never felt I hate to use
(36:20):
the word dangerous, but it never felt dangerous, right, it
never it never felt that way at all to me.
Not that it does not that I feel danger to
my to my person as a you know, as a
white sis.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
He had dude with a beard like walking around like
I usually feel pretty safe in my person.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
But yeah, I can't say that. I would.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
I have reflect that from everybody that I know that
lives there. And people make choices about where they go,
what time of day, et cetera, et cetera. And a
big part of that is because of the gentrification that
has pushed the you know, native population of Albuquerque out
into these more rural places. It makes it harder to
get to you know, get to groceries, get to jobs,
(37:00):
get to transportation. Yeah, all of those are factors in this.
And it's and it's not just a one size fits
all solution.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Well, Lucas, is there everything else you wanted to get
into today?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Oh? I mean there's always something, but no, this was
this was great? Thank you? Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you
giving us the opportunity.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
It's you know, I'm a I'm a longtime listener of
this show, and when this issue came up, I really
was thinking about some of those topics you brought up,
you know, way back in the first run of It
could Happen Here, and thinking about the that conflict that
exists between state entities and you know, passing laws and
(37:38):
enforcing laws and who does that and who doesn't and
what does it mean if they don't.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Yeah. Yeah, So this will continue to be a topic
of vibrant discussion. So I'm sure we'll have you back
at the very near future. Yeah, happy to come back
for that. Yep, yep. All right, everybody, this is the uh,
this has been an episode of It Could Happen Here?
(38:03):
You know, go go Yeah, Lucas, you have any pluggables
to plug before we're all out of here?
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Oh yeah sure.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
I mean, if you are interested, I'm on Twitter at
Lucas Herndon. And if you're curious about you know, New
Mexico politics, progress now New Mexico on all the socials.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Most excellent. All right, everybody, this has been an episode.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Go home. It could Happen Here? As a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could
happen here, Updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources.
(38:44):
Thanks for listening.
Welcome everyone back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast
about things falling apart, and sometimes stuff that's slightly less
depressing than that, but not today. Today we're talking about
the falling apart sort of thing and our continuing coverage
of what we like to call the crumbles. Here today
leads us to a little state called New Mexico, and
(00:27):
specifically a little city in New Mexico called Albuquerque. If
you have been kind of casually skimming the news about
the American Southwest, you might be aware that the governor
of New Mexico has recently announced a ban on citizens
carrying openly or concealed with a license, firearms within the
(00:50):
county that contains Albuquerque. The justification for this is a
recent surge in gun violence in the state, most of
which is centered on Albuquerque. And this is there's a
been a pretty over the last specifically the last year,
a pretty dramatic increase in the number of shootings from
(01:11):
twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two. The number of
shootings in Albuquerque, or murders, I should say, most of
which are shootings, also about eighty four percent. The number
of murders in Albuquerque almost doubled. I think it's and
I think still you know, it's gone down a little
bit this year, but there's still about fifty percent higher
than the normal rate. Now, as you might guess from
(01:34):
the fact that you've probably watched Breaking Bad fifteen years
ago or whatever, the drug trade, drug trafficking, drug deals
gone bad have something to do with this. But I
think this year about seventeen something like that, seventeen twenty
percent of the homicides in Albuquerque are drug related, but
a much higher number above seventy percent. The police have
(01:55):
given the sort of kind of primary cause as individual
dis respect. Now what does that mean, Well, it means
kind of what you think of it. People getting into
shit with each other and somebody pulls a gun.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
A lot of these have been traffic related, and in fact,
the shooting that kind of most directly inspired the governor's
controversial legal measure was a road rage incident. About what
was this, Yeah, on September ninth, I think it was.
An eleven year old boy was shot and killed in
(02:29):
a road rage incident as his family was leaving a
minor league baseball game. It looks like his aunt cut
off another driver. The driver followed them and fired seventeen
shots into the car. The eleven year old boy was
killed and his aunt is still in the hospital in
unstable condition at least last I checked after this shooting.
(02:53):
And this is, by the way, you know, prior to this,
there was another case where a little kid, I think
a four year old was killed in another road rage
shooting incident. We don't know who shot the kid in
this instance. We don't know if it was a for example,
a citizen legally carrying a firearm or somebody. Although in
the state of New Mexico you are allowed to carry
(03:14):
a loaded firearm in your vehicle. You're not allowed to
walk around with it concealed without a license, but you're
allowed to conceal it in your vehicle. The shooting that
preceded this one, the road raid shooting, wasn't illegal shooting.
It was because the guy was a drug dealer. He
had illegal drugs on him, all that stuff. But yeah,
it's messy. So really, in response to the governor's proclamation,
(03:38):
there have been quite a bit of people have gotten angry,
in part because the Supreme Court ruled fairly recently that
you have a right to carry a concealed firearm. There
are some barrier states can set up in terms of licensing,
but you can't stop people from carrying, like you have
to have a legal avenue for people to carry concealed firearms.
That's something that the Supreme Court has said you have
(03:59):
a right to do, and governors do not have the
right to overrule that sort of thing on public health grounds.
So this has become an increasingly contentious issue. We're going
to talk about some of the things that have followed
from this, but I want to bring on our source
for the day, Lucas Herndon. Lucas is a New Mexico
based activist, someone we've had on the show before as
(04:22):
well as a gun owner. Lucas, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Thanks Robert. Good to be back, sort of as always.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a messy one.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Yeah. So that was a good a good summary of
what got us here this The the executive order was
dropped Friday afternoon, and I immediately went to my work
chat and said, hold on, y'all, this is going to
(04:53):
be a wild weekend. And as you can imagine, it was.
There has been incredible responses for sort of everybody on
to sort of Yeah, despite political ideologies, the responses have
been swift and ranging in their loudness, let's say, and
(05:15):
it's created a yeah, national buzz. A number of right
wing talking heads from the state have now you know,
been brought into national talking spaces. We have seen the
news bounce around the far right blogosphere and you know,
it's made it to Alex Jones and that kind of ilk.
(05:37):
But then, of course, you know, and so obviously there's
the there's that far end of the spectrum, and you know,
then there's the response here in the state, which is
you know, ranging from supportive, too indifferent, to angry to
all you know, all the different things you can think of.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, one of the things people may be kind of
confused about this. One of the things that's problematic about
this is specifically the fact that it is restricting citizens
who have concealed carryer permits from continuing to carry in
the county. States have a right to at least currently
the Supreme Court has not you know, ruled counter to that.
Currently have a right to restrict people from open carrying,
(06:14):
and you have a right to restrict people from doing
stuff like have unlicensed carrying a handgun in your car right.
In the state of Oregon, for example, you cannot carry
a loaded weapon in your vehicle without a concealed carry permit.
As far as I'm aware, there's not been any sort
of constitutional challenge to that. There may be in the future,
but the Supreme Court, you know, has ruled very differently
(06:34):
on the issue of concealed firearms, and so that's a
problem because, you know, regardless of what you think about
how the law on concealed carry of firearms should be,
the idea of a governor overturning a right like that,
access to a right like that based on what they
call the public health emergency is deeply concerning, you know,
(06:56):
which is why you had, you know, a surprising people
come out against this, including David who's one of the
Parkland kids, and a gun control advocate who said, you know,
the govenor simply doesn't have the right to do this,
which is kind of more or less where I land.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Yeah, and you know, and just to just to be clear, right,
I'm I'm not an attorney, but I am a gun
owner and have exercised that right since I was legally
allowed to do so at eighteen, which was very long ago.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
At this point.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
So, yeah, I've been I have been a New Mexico
gun owner paying attention to things and how those laws
affect me for quite a while. One of the yeah,
one of the interesting things about the executive order, and
you sort of touched on it, is that the in
the in the order, it specifically limits having a firearm
(07:47):
in your vehicle to traveling to any excluded place that
she listed in the executive order. Right, so there's there's
a there's a ban on you know, carrying unless you're
going to like X, wire Z specific places, and that
then is furthered that you can only have a firearm
in your vehicle if you're traveling to one of the
(08:07):
said places. So yeah, that's that is in direct contradiction
to existing law because New Mexico, ostensibly your home or
your car is an extension of your home. You don't
there is there there basically is no law about having
a car a firearm in your car, which has led
(08:32):
to some weird things because so, for instance, you can
get a dui on a bicycle and so that law
has actually been used that you can carry a concealed
firearm like in a backpack on a bicycle. But the
second you step off the bicycle. Now you're in violation
of the law unless you have a permit. So, you know,
those specific pieces of gun law and her executive order,
(08:54):
even in the state, are at odds let alone whatever
the maybe you know, the implications.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Are yeah, and I think you know. One of the
things that is kind of concerning about this to me
is and that should be concerning about this people, is
that I don't see how I can see an argument
for saying we want to restrict the unlicensed carry of
firearms in vehicles, right, because a significant number of these
(09:22):
shootings seem to have involved that. Although it is a
little bit unclear. We don't know who carried out the
most recent road raid shooting, so we don't know if
that person was legally allowed to possess a firearm. Right,
we know that in at least one of the recent
shootings that killed a kid, the person was you know,
had a dealing amount and what appeared to be a
dealing like a setup of you know, it was parceled
(09:45):
out into baggies marijuana on him, which is illegal. I'm
not making a moral statement about that. I don't think
it should be illegal to but it is. It is illegal,
right Like, he was not carrying within the bounds of
federal law. But restricting people from carrying licensed concealed hand
guns does not seem I mean, number one, I haven't
seen evidence that like that's a major driver of gun violence.
(10:07):
But number two, if a decent number of these shootings
are people acting outside of the bounds of the law,
which they appear to be, I don't see how restricting
people from lawfully carrying a weapon is something that can
that's going to make the problem better, right Like, it
seems like you're kind of striking at this in an
(10:29):
ineffective way that's going to galvanize resistance to any kind
of gun control, as opposed to going out with kind
of a more limited and surgical approach to try and
actually tackle the causes of the problem.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
I mean, I think one of the reasons why being
on your show to talk about this is worth thinking about.
The last time I was on was, you know, earlier
in the year when we discovered that there was a
GOP operative who had committed acts of violence in the
form of shooting at democrats elected Democrats up in the
(11:06):
Bernoleo County area as an act of political violence. And
worth thinking about is that, you know, he was charged
with firing a firing a firearm from a moving vehicle,
which is a crime, like it's it's a specific crime,
which and also like very valid crime. You should not
(11:28):
be you should never shoot from a moving vehicle. Like
that's correct, that's so the right, so we you know
again yeah again not a lawyer, however, it seemed duplicative
to have a law on the books that already there
it is a crime to fire your gun from a
car already h and people who have, people who have
(11:52):
committed heinous acts of violence by violating that law could
be and should be charged under that law. First of all,
let me just say, like if we believe in a
car serial state, because that's a whole.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Other moral question.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
However, for the purposes of this conversation, however, if somebody
is just driving down the street and has a gun
in their car, does that create you know, are they
are you know, are they committing a crime that feels
conflicting and harmful?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, And it's you know, as you there's a couple
of things we should talk about here. I think one
of them is what I what I consider to be
a kind of a dishonest anti gun control argument that
comes out from time to time, which is the idea
that you shouldn't restrict access. You can't restrict access to
firearms because criminals won't obey those laws. It's true, criminals
(12:44):
don't obey like people who are committing gun crimes are
not obeying the law. By definition, they're people who are
committing gun crimes. But increased availability access to firearms makes
it easier for people who are going to be bad
actors to acquire fire arms. Right, Regardless of what you
think the legal remedy to that situation is, that is
(13:04):
a pretty undeniable situation. I consider this to be quite different,
because what you are saying in this instance is we
are restricting We have people who are not acting legally
with firearms they already own. So we are going to
restrict people who are acting within the bounds of the
law with firearms they own from from behaving in a
certain way, which I have a serious issue with. But
(13:26):
I do think that there is a difference, you know,
between those two kind of situations on a pretty fundamental level.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Yeah, I would agree, and and and the disingenuous knee
jerk response from the far right over this, while completely expected,
that's exactly what you know, that's exactly what they're doing, right,
They're equating this ill informed, uh poorly worded however you
(13:52):
want to say, they're they're they're taking this thing and
using it as a pretense for all their uh far
right propaganda extremes, you know, calling to impeach the governor
because she's you know, intending to violate the constitution or
some silliness like that, which is yeah, which is just yeah,
(14:13):
it's that's just far right conspiracy manstormation, in my.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Opinion, and it has galvanized them. Right, there's been an
open carry protests already, and the sheriff saying or one
of the sheriffs in the area saying like, I'm not
going to we will not be enforcing this law.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Well and and yeah, and I think that that's actually
maybe something that for this podcast and for for your audience,
for those longtime listeners who who followed this show, that
to me is actually one of the most maybe interesting
and like crumbles oriented parts of this Yes, yes, absolutely, yeah,
so yeah. So yesterday, the Bernoleo County sheriff, who is
(14:54):
an elected official and it is his County that the
that this executive order effects, came out and said that
he would not enforce it. He said that the uh
he'd got he'd barely gotten a heads up from the governor,
but he did admit that. You know, she she sort
of like reached out to him, said hey, I'm gonna
do this thing. I know you probably won't agree, and
(15:16):
he's like, yeah, I don't agree, and she's like, okay,
well we'll figure it out.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
And he was like, okay, I guess we will anyway.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Yeah, So this he came out, made this announcement he's
not going to enforce it. The the chief of police
from the Albuquerque Department has more or less made the
same intonation, with support from the very progressive Democratic mayor
of Albuquerque, who hasn't necessarily outright said he disagrees, but
(15:45):
has said that he's more concerned about his officer's safety.
And that brings up an interesting point that like, oh yes,
like like cops trying to enforce this law like that
sounds like a recipe for disaster, which is which is
why you didn't see any cops in we're seeing the.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
The order at the protest on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, and it is one of those like why why
would you write like that's such a yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
So the most recent thing this afternoon is that the
the state's attorney attorney general, whose whose job it is
to defend the state or you know, officers of the state,
has announced that he will not defend the governor in
his official capacity from the three current lawsuits that have
already been filed since Friday. So so yeah, there there
(16:38):
basically seems to be this complete lack of support from
the from the parts of government that are supposed to
do the things you know, yeah, and and you know,
it begs the yeah, it for those of us that
think about these things, it begs the question of, yeah,
(16:59):
how far does this go? What is the next you
know thing that a sitting governor attempts to pass using
administrative power and then isn't enforced And what does that mean?
And how do we care about this one but not
other things or you know whatever. So those are those
are the questions that that we're all asking ourselves here
in New Mexico, And as somebody who works in this
(17:20):
field professionally, like we've spent a lot of time in
the last forty eight hours, like asking ourselves those questions.
It's tough, it's there, there is a there isn't an
easy answer on this one.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
And this is something by the way, that is I
think pretty directly relevant to everybody listening because one of
the stories probably under reported stories. We've talked about it
from time to time here, you know, it was something
that kind of was was in the DNA of the
original you know, run of it could happen here, but
probably we could stand to talk about it lot more
(18:00):
is the rise of most common term these guys use
for themselves as constitutional sheriffs, right, And there is this
this is a long standing belief on the far right.
It comes out of really the seventies and eighties is
when a lot of this stuff started cooking. But this
belief that has kind of formed over you know, particularly
the last twenty years, that the sheriff constitutionally is the
(18:23):
highest law of the land, basically, right. And so you
can have sheriffs who refuse to particularly and this is
where it comes in, most often refuse to enforce gun
control laws, right. And this has sort of You've got
a lot you know, a lot of some of this
came got sort of like mixed in with a lot
(18:44):
of the election bullshit on the right, where like you
had a lot of sheriffs, you know, there was a
lot of concern as to how they would respond to
states and the federal government sort of enforcing, you know,
or stopping, you know, the Trump administration from doing some
certain things around the counting of votes. You know, there
(19:05):
was a lot of real concern about that. And I
think this is something that is going to continue to
be more and more of a problem because a lot
of these sheriffs departments are completely out of fucking pocket,
right these are And by the way, with sheriff departments,
not that being part of a police hierarchy in a
traditional sense provides much restraint. But sheriffs are completely fucking
(19:28):
out there right like they are there are not It
does vary from state to state, but there's not any
sort of like central requirement about like what it takes
to be a sheriff or a sheriff's deputy. A lot
of them are just dudes, right, Like That's why you
had it was either in New Mexico or Arizona, like
a small sheriff's department basically selling to like celebrities, you
can become a sheriff's deputy here like work a week
(19:50):
and a year and then you can carry a concealed
handgun wherever because cops get that, right, you know, right, Like, yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Yeah, So I just want to be clear because what
you're talking about and how it pertains to New Mexico
is both one hundred percent correct and has and has
and has happened here.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
It could happen here.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
But is uh but in the case of this issue
right now, Yeah, Bernoleo County Sheriff took office this year.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
He is a Democrat. He's a man of color. Uh not.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
This is not me making excuses for cops because but
I just to be clear about this. And he is
generally disliked by the right and has been seen as
you know whatever, soft on crime and stuff, which he
hates and has tried He's tried real hard to sort
of buck that position, and and so and and that,
(20:45):
which which makes this all the maybe worse, right that that, Yeah,
a Democrat elected in a democratic county with a you know,
the city, the state's largest democratic municipality, right Like, for
that guy to be like, yeah, I'm not gonna I'm
not gonna do this, and and I also there's something
(21:06):
that needs to be said here. You you cited some great,
well tragic statistics about my state and specifically about Albuquerque earlier.
And and this is a public health crisis, right gotten
by absolutely yeah, it's out.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
When you're seeing the number of homicides basically double, you
know in the space of a fucking year, that that
is a that's a crist Something needs to be done right.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Right right.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
And and so one of one of one of the
big things that hasn't I don't think been said loud
enough is that if if we you know, you know,
if we all agree that it is a crisis, a
thirty day ban is not gonna it's not gonna do anything,
and it's certainly not going to address the root causes.
(21:53):
And I actually, very reluctantly have to hand it to
the sheriff for his statements yesterday, because, as he put it,
he has enough crime to deal with.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
He's not enough going on that.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
His deputies have to have to deal with right now
to then go and enforce this arbitrary rule or you
know order. It's not a it's not a lot, it's
but you know what I mean. So so that's another thing, right,
like this is your You're we're dealing with a public
health crisis by putting the impetus on law enforcement, which
(22:28):
is the whole problem with you know, the way that
this country deals with, you know, the the quote unquote
drug problem. And and let's be very clear here, when
the governor issued her order on Friday, she issued two orders.
One is called uh the one with the one with
dealing with guns, is declaring state of public Health Emergency
(22:49):
due to gun violence. But at the same time, she
issued one saying declaring State of Public Health Emergency due
to drug abuse. And there, you know, for her, these
things are related, and she's you know, she's trying to
time together. And I think we all know that given
the last forty years of American history dealing with drugs
(23:12):
via you know, law enforcement has not done anything to
help the problem. And so that it just again, this
is one of those things where it feels counterintuitive for
a governor who you know, generally the Democrats of this
state support, who has won by fairly large margins in
(23:33):
both of her elections and and has a Democratic majority
in her legislature, that for her then to issue this
order and put more requirements on her law enforcement that
she's expecting to you know, also then carry. It just
doesn't it doesn't make sense, right, And so that's where
(23:54):
we're all scrambling.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
It's it's there's a couple of things that make this
so dangerous. One is that it's this unnecessary own goal, right,
you know, as you stated, this is not this and
I didn't want to be sort of intimating that he
was that this sheriff is not particularly tied in directly
to some of these longer standing weird constitutional sheriff things,
but it does tie into this this pattern of sort
(24:21):
of conservatives backing sheriffs against like state power and against
federal power that they dislike. And in this case one
of the things that makes this so toxic is they
have a point, right, this this order is not constitutional,
and giving them ammunition like that is number one. It
strengthens right wing organizing in a way that is you know, dangerous,
(24:44):
but also it's completely unnecessary, it's completely it does not
address the problem, and the problem is is very like,
extremely serious, and so I find this kind of distracting
from realistic solutions here, you know, which, which, by the way,
can you know, probably do to some extent involve restricting
(25:06):
you know, uh certain the ability of people to carry
in certain situations, to carry in certain ways in certain situations.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
I think one of them.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Yeah, oh yeah, no, no, you have well, I was
just gonna I just want to, you know, for for
folks interested in, you know, what New Mexico has done.
Things that have happened in the under this administration, are
there are There have been some advancements that as a
gun owner I support. One was closing private sales as
a thing. You know, I grew up buying guns out
(25:36):
of the backs of cars. Uh wild, I have some
wild stories about that, but that was a fully legal
thing to do.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
We had private sales in this in the state. I've
got a lot of car guns up. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah, And it is fun, but we should probably probably,
that's not probably, This should be probably, and especially and
especially for those of us that don't have anything restricting
us from by purchasing firearms, there's no reason to not
just do anyway. So that being said, so the New
(26:11):
Mexico did end private sales, so that's one thing. And
then this last year we instituted It's not a full
safe storage law, but it goes a long way instituting
a safe storage law. It specifically creates a situation where
if a minor gets access to a gun that was
(26:32):
not secured and then commits a crime with it, then
the owner of that firearm is then held liable. And
it has been used now twice and two fairly high
profile tragic shootings in the state. I should note here
a decent number of the recent spike and homicides have
been children getting access to firearm zoned by adults, either
(26:55):
accidentally or purposefully using them to shoot and kill people. Right, yeah,
so yeah, the law, the laws. The law is called
the Benny Hargrove Act, which was named in honor of
a of a young man who was killed at a
middle school by a fellow middle schooler with a gun
that the guy got off of. You know that the
kid got out of a you know, a bedside drawer.
(27:17):
And uh yeah, And as again, as a firearm owner,
like I'm sitting across from my safe right now, I
keep my guns locked up.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
So there are there are practical solutions.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Here, yes, And and I know that this country has
a hard time talking about guns without it getting out
of pocket very quickly, But there are practical solutions we have.
You know, one of the interesting responses from Democratic lawmakers
in the state over the last you know, three days
has been a call for a special session of our
(27:49):
legislature to discuss what some of those things might be.
The trouble with that is that in everybody's got this
like knee jerk thing and everybody wants to talk about crime.
I'm using big air quotes crime, tim and and which
is in direct counter you know, counterance to the idea
that this is a public health crisis. So you know,
we have a lot of reservations about what what might
(28:13):
come out of a session like that. We would have
to do a lot of work to protect you know,
some of the things we've we've you know, we've done
a lot to protect people from the car cerial system
in this state, which is hell a predatory, and so
those are protections we want to keep, you know, keep
in place. But it's easy for the right of course
(28:35):
to blame like that's the reason the reason, the reason
why shootings have increased is because we let people who've
been arrested for you know, petty theft or something out
of out of jail, and for some reason, that's why
crime is up. I don't know, it doesn't make sense,
but anyway, so you know, it's even even with the
(28:55):
solutions come more problems. But but yeah, there does seem
to be the unintended consequences of this order seem to
be the not just the backlash, but then the sort
of non support from folks who would otherwise be supporting her.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
So I kind of want to close, probably by talking
about thank you for that, by the way, for that
context for talking about what I think is the underlying
a big part of the underlying cause you that is
(29:33):
also a big part of a surgeon violence in a
number of states nationwide, which is that like people are
a lot of a significant chunk of this country has
become unhinged since COVID. I kind of suspect that has
a lot to do with it. But you are seeing
in a number of states a significant amount of like
(29:54):
anti social violence, violence that occurs because somebody cut somebody
off in traffic, somebody gets into an argument at a store,
you know, somebody gets into an argument at a parking lot.
There have been a number of shootings as a result
of this. It's happened. You know, this is a big
part of the rise and gun violence in Texas, which
is also tied I think, to permitless carry to an extent,
(30:16):
but like it is broader than that too, Right, this
is not purely an access to guns, is why a
lot of these crimes involved guns. But there's just been
this rise in anti social violence, a lot of which
comes out of arguments or perceived disrespect between one person
and a group of people or two people or whatever.
And I think this is probably tied into with a
(30:39):
lot of the you know, increase in political violence we've seen,
because a decent amount of it does arise out of that.
And this is part of what I think is kind
of disheartening about the governor's response here, is that this
is a very serious problem and the kind of knee
jerk reactions don't help it. But also like I don't
know what does right. You can deal with the aspects
(31:01):
of this problem, Right, maybe if people aren't just able
to throw a gun in their pants and legally be carrying,
there will be less of these shootings, but that doesn't
deal with all of the underlying problem. And I don't
really know what does This kind of like increased willingness
of Americans to resort to violence in interpersonal conflicts is
(31:25):
a real issue.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Yeah, oh man, you said, yeah, I think that, you know,
I'm thinking of I'm thinking about the first time I
was able to go to a school function of my
daughters after after COVID orders were lifted. And I remember
(31:49):
I was was with a family member and they were,
you know, they were the commenting on sort of people's
bad behavior in the auditorium, and you know, and I
had to find them.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I was like, you know, the.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
These people have not been outside, yeah, in a year
and a half. And you know, and like specifically, like
some of these little kids that are running around, they
they maybe have never been to a function like this,
you know what I mean. Like by the time, by
the time most three or four year olds have are
going to I don't know, like a baseball game or
(32:23):
a band concert, you know, they've at some point it's
the first time, but you know, they get used to it,
they start to understand the rules of things. But yeah,
like after you know, if you grow up and you're
all of a sudden, you're five and you've never been
to something like this, like you don't know, you're supposed
to sit down and be quiet, listen to the thing right,
like you're just sitting on your phone anyway. So yeah, yeah,
I definitely agree with you. I think in New Mexico
(32:45):
we're not isolated from other states in the sense that
we have arise in drug use and related crime. We're
not isolated in the sense we have a rise in
you know, our houseless population, in lack of job or
at least good job, and and all of those things
come together to make life hard, you know, and when
(33:06):
life is hard, it it impacts people and they make,
you know, bad decisions. The thing that I think does
hurt New Mexico and and and is maybe what makes
New Mexico unfortunately sort of stand out from some of
its issues is, you know, we are a very rural state.
We have one fairly large city in Albuquerque, but even then,
(33:30):
the surrounding parts of Albuquerque, just like the rest of
the state, are very rural, and there's a certain amount
of you know, we just as a state, we are
lacking resources and always have, you know, we rely so
heavily on one industry and without without the systems in
place to ensure that people have a place to live
(33:50):
or you know, a meal, to get a job, to
go to recreation that they can afford things like that.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
I mean, it is tough. It is just tough out there.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
And I'm I'm privileged and I get to you know,
I I'm raising my daughter in a home that you know,
we want for very little. But I see it even
in my in my peer group, I see people who
are struggling all the time, and yeah, it's just tough
out there, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
It is, it is.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
And I honestly, you know, New Mexico and Oregon are
similar in a lot of ways, and that they're both
very low popular. I think we're both at around four
million people if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Oh New Mexico is only like two million.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Oh you're two millions. So yeah, even even less so
low population states that have one big city that kind
of dominates politics, but a very conservative kind of rural
area in a lot of ways outside of that. And
in both cases, that urban area has seen recent massive
spikes in interpersonal violence and in you know, fatal issues
due to drug use. Right now, one of the things, obviously,
(34:53):
one of the things Oregon has coming through it is
because of all of the retire recent stuff here, like
a much higher tax base, right so there's theoretically more resources,
although I tend to argue very incompetently applied, so most
of us don't actually get out, but you do. You
do have this kind of this This is one of
these places where this urban rural divide is is both
(35:13):
a lot stricter and where this state that is the
majority of the population and is dealing with such severe
issues is also kind of the political center or this
this city is also the political center of the state. Well, yeah,
that and and just yeah, you absolutely hit on something there.
You know, Albuquerque has been historically you know, decentralized due
(35:36):
to gentrification for the last generation because of exactly what
you said, which is that retirement community, you know, outside
of oil and gas, and then the federal government in
terms of like the labs and the universities and things
like that, Like retirees are basically our third general you know,
generative revenue. Agriculture probably in there too, but you know what,
(35:59):
you give what I'm saying, they're a very high portion.
And yeah, and and you know the Albuquerque that I
grew up, going to visit all of my family in
and like going you know, going downtown, going you know,
down to the international district going near the university. You know,
it never felt it never felt I hate to use
(36:20):
the word dangerous, but it never felt dangerous, right, it
never it never felt that way at all to me.
Not that it does not that I feel danger to
my to my person as a you know, as a
white sis.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
He had dude with a beard like walking around like
I usually feel pretty safe in my person.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
But yeah, I can't say that. I would.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
I have reflect that from everybody that I know that
lives there. And people make choices about where they go,
what time of day, et cetera, et cetera. And a
big part of that is because of the gentrification that
has pushed the you know, native population of Albuquerque out
into these more rural places. It makes it harder to
get to you know, get to groceries, get to jobs,
(37:00):
get to transportation. Yeah, all of those are factors in this.
And it's and it's not just a one size fits
all solution.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Well, Lucas, is there everything else you wanted to get
into today?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Oh? I mean there's always something, but no, this was
this was great? Thank you? Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you
giving us the opportunity.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
It's you know, I'm a I'm a longtime listener of
this show, and when this issue came up, I really
was thinking about some of those topics you brought up,
you know, way back in the first run of It
could Happen Here, and thinking about the that conflict that
exists between state entities and you know, passing laws and
(37:38):
enforcing laws and who does that and who doesn't and
what does it mean if they don't.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Yeah. Yeah, So this will continue to be a topic
of vibrant discussion. So I'm sure we'll have you back
at the very near future. Yeah, happy to come back
for that. Yep, yep. All right, everybody, this is the uh,
this has been an episode of It Could Happen Here?
(38:03):
You know, go go Yeah, Lucas, you have any pluggables
to plug before we're all out of here?
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Oh yeah sure.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
I mean, if you are interested, I'm on Twitter at
Lucas Herndon. And if you're curious about you know, New
Mexico politics, progress now New Mexico on all the socials.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Most excellent. All right, everybody, this has been an episode.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Go home. It could Happen Here? As a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could
happen here, Updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources.
(38:44):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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