New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, said she won’t be renewing the public gun ban she instituted last year. The temporary public health order was issued in September of 2023 and was only supposed to last 30 days. It was allowed to expire on Saturday, October 12, 2024. Talk about a long month.
Despite not renewing it again, Grisham touted the measure as a success. More than 1,700 firearms were removed from private ownership, fewer people were murdered (though she gave no numbers for that metric), and jails are more crowded than ever. She even managed not to get impeached! In short, the governor seems to think the program was a roaring success.
Gun Bans and Buybacks
The office of the Governor released a statement on October 16 touting the success of the year-long order. Among the accomplishments were “a doubling of arrests in…
