<![CDATA[New Mexico]]>

District Attorney Puts Alec Baldwin Back in the Danger Zone Over ‘Rust’ Shooting

September 26, 2022 by Bonchie Leave a Comment

Is Alec Baldwin about to be charged for his role in the 2021 shooting death that occurred on the set of ‘Rust’ in New Mexico? A week ago, most would have said there’s no chance and that Baldwin was in the clear, but the District Attorney handling the case, Mary Carmack-Altwies, appears to have other ideas.

According to CBS News, Baldwin and three others could be charged in the near future.

A district attorney in New Mexico said she could be close to charging up to four people, including actor Alec Baldwin, in the “Rust” film set shooting that occurred in Santa Fe on Oct. 21, 2021. During the shooting, Baldwin’s prop gun was discharged, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza.
First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies made an emergency funding request for $635,500 to continue to fund the investigation of the high-profile case.
“We are within weeks, if not days, of receiving the final report from the sheriff’s office,” Carmack-Altwies said during a New Mexico Board of Finance meeting on Sept. 20. She said while they are still awaiting reports “it’s become apparent that we will be potentially charging between one and four people with criminal charges and each of those charges will probably include some variation of our homicide statute.”

The request for funding isn’t unusual given the high-profile nature of this case. There’s a lot of forensic work that has to be done to provide the evidence necessary to support charges, assuming that evidence exists, and this is a very complicated case. This specific district attorney is also in a rural area and doesn’t have much staff or resources. It’s probable the state will chip in.

A report from the local sheriff’s office is set to be delivered in October and will be the basis for any further investigation. With Carmack-Altwies going public with the possibility of charges, though, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s already gotten some information about what it will contain. Previous forensics showed that the gun that Baldwin had could not have been fired without pulling the trigger, though Baldwin insists he never did.

For his part, the D-list actor has remained defiant and active in his public life, seeming to have moved past what happened, or at least wanting to put up that front. It would be quite the turnaround if he ended up getting charged over this. Still, I would be curious to know what charges are being entertained. I doubt seriously there is any accusation that Baldwin shot the victim on purpose. Perhaps something to do with negligence with a firearm?

We’ll find out one way or the other soon enough. RedState will keep you updated on this story.

New Mexico governor wants more guns taken through “red flag” laws

September 19, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

Despite (or maybe because of) a number of new gun control laws put in place by the Democrats in control of New Mexico’s state government over the past few years, violent crime in the Land of Enchantment has only increased. Crime is a major concern for many voters, and now Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is hoping to woo those voters to her re-election bid by pushing for an increase in the use of the state’s “red flag” law, which was passed with great fanfare but has been little used in the months since. As KRQE-TV reported in April:

According to the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Court, since going into effect last May, four ERPO petitions have been filed. Three of them resulted in the mandatory seizing of firearms for one year. But in one of those three cases, the order was lifted before the year was up. “I expected a low number of uses because it’s a very precise tool that you would only use in an extreme situation. So, I was not surprised by the number four,” Rep. Garratt said.
“Clearly, it’s not working as well as we’d like it to so that’s why we need to revisit,” Rep. Ely said. “It can’t just be four or five times that this would’ve been applicable. What was the problem?”

The numbers haven’t grown much since then. Part of the problem is that many county sheriffs aren’t keen on using the law, because they have philosophical and/or pragmatic concerns with how the law is supposed to work. But even in Democratic bastions like Bernalillo County the law isn’t getting much use, and now Grisham has announced a commission designed to get the petitions flowing through the court system.

Under an executive order signed by the Democratic governor, a seven-member task force led by state Public Safety Secretary Jason Bowie will also be instructed to compile an annual report about use of the law that allows firearms to temporarily be taken away from those deemed a danger to themselves or others.
As of this summer, only nine petitions had been filed statewide for court orders allowing gun seizures, according to data provided by the state Administrative Office of the Courts. And just six of those nine cases resulted in one-year orders being approved.
The Governor’s Office has defended the law, despite its infrequent usage, but a spokeswoman said in June that amendments could be made in order to make it easier for petitions to be filed.
“Extreme risk protection orders are an effective, nationally proven tool to prevent gun violence and protect New Mexicans,” Lujan Grisham said in a Friday statement. “This task force will ensure stakeholders across the state have the information and tools they need to successfully and proactively address threats of gun violence, and prevent harm in New Mexico communities.”

ERPO’s aren’t “proven” effective. In fact, there’s no way to prove their effectiveness. You can point to the fact that a crime wasn’t committed by the subject of a “red flag” order, but that doesn’t mean that it was the ERPO that prevented a crime from happening. It could be that there was simply no criminal intent on the part of the gun owner to begin with. Even studies that have tried to use computer modeling to predict the effectiveness of “red flag” laws at preventing suicides have found that it takes somewhere between 10 and 20 “red flag” orders to prevent one suicide.

The ugly truth that Grisham doesn’t want to admit is that “red flag” laws are used as a relatively cheap and largely ineffective alternative to addressing the real and substantive problems in our mental health system. Under New Mexico’s “red flag” law, if a judge determines that the subject of a petition poses a threat to themselves or others, their guns are taken away but the supposedly dangerous individual is left to their own devices. There’s no mental health treatment offered, no attempt to defuse the dangerousness at the heart of the petition, because the state’s mental health system is already crumbling thanks to staffing shortages and a lack of resources in many rural areas.

Fixing that mess would not only address those few truly dangerous individuals (gun owners and non-gun owners alike) by giving them access to care, but would address those in need of help whose issues might not be quite as acute. Instead, Michell Lujan Grisham is doubling down on the use of ineffective and constitutionally suspect “red flag” laws. Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Ronchetti has already been running on a pro-2A, tough-on-crime platform, and I hope he hammers Grisham for her gun control-centric approach to crime, public safety, and the critical condition of the state’s mental health system.

New Mexico governor stumps for gun control in campaign push with Giffords

August 23, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

Since New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham took office, the state has adopted several gun control measures including universal background checks and the establishment of a “red flag” firearm seizure law. The governor even tried to keep gun stores closed during the pandemic by not including them in her list of “essential businesses”. Her gun control efforts haven’t reduced violent crime in the state, however. In fact, according to one media report in the state New Mexico had the second-highest rate of violent crime in the country last year, with Albuquerque setting a new record for homicides with 110.

Despite the failures of her gun control laws, Lujan Grisham is doubling down on her anti-2A approach to public safety in her re-election bid. In fact, this past weekend she was campaigning with former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords; vowing that if she’s re-elected the state will see other big changes to its gun laws.

“We just never move the needle,” Lujan Grisham said. “There is a grip on this country by the NRA; their candidates refuse to uphold this constitution. You and I … have a constitutional right to be safe in our home and our schools and our community.
“Until that is obtained by every single gun-safety effort, we are going to keep fighting,” she added.

Never move the needle? I thought Congress just passed the “first major gun legislation in decades” back in July, and Lujan Grisham herself has signed multiple gun control bills into law. Democrats are in complete control of state government in New Mexico, not the NRA, but the New Mexico governor is stuck on stale talking points because she can’t possibly admit that her administration and her Democratic allies in the state legislature are only making things worse by cracking down on legal gun owners trying to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms instead of putting the screws to violent criminals in the Land of Enchantment.

Locked in what could be a close race with Republican Mark Ronchetti, Lujan Grisham has been on a four-day campaign sprint with Lt. Gov. Howie Morales, including stops in Las Cruces, the South Valley, Albuquerque, Gallup and Farmington.
“I am right in there with people who care about choice,” Lujan Grisham said, “who care about gun violence and who care about infrastructure and who want to know they have a governor who can manage in an emergency.”
… Ronchetti has criticized Lujan Grisham’s record on guns and has come out against further gun control laws. On his website, he pledges to oppose “efforts by liberal gun-grabbers who seek to criminalize law-abiding gun owners rather than focus on prosecuting criminals.
“From supporting efforts to outlaw certain firearms and magazines to even banning gun shows at Expo, the current governor has made her opposition to gun rights disturbingly clear,” Ronchetti said.
Lujan Grisham took a moment Sunday to take a jab at Ronchetti’s stance on firearms.
“You have someone who has no interest in upholding your, mine, constitutional rights to be safe in our own homes,” Lujan Grisham said.
Bernadette Vadurro, chairwoman of the Santa Fe County Democratic Party, accused right-wing media of trying to scare people by saying Lujan Grisham will take people’s guns away.
“She’s not going to take people’s guns away,” Vadurro said. “What she is going to do is make sure that guns are in responsible people’s hands. If you need a license to drive a car, in my opinion, you should have a license on how to use a gun.”

The government has no duty or responsibility for your individual safety, even if someone breaks into your home. Your safety is your reponsibility, and Lujan Grisham has worked to make it harder for law-abiding citizens to access their constitutionally-protected right to armed self-defense. While the governor brags about managing “in an emergency”, she tried to make it virtually impossible for anyone to lawfully acquire a firearm back in 2020 when she refused to let gun stores and ranges open during the early days of the COVID pandemic. And because New Mexico has “universal background checks,” private sales were out as well because there were no gun stores open to conduct the required background check on private transfers.

Lujan Grisham has not only called for a ban on so-called assault weapons, she actively impeded the Second Amendment rights of New Mexico residents with her gun store closures… and to what end? Violent crime has skyrocketed in the state over the past two years, while law-abiding citizens have faced greater hurdles (and at times insurmountable obstacles) before they can legally buy or carry a firearm in self-defense. New Mexicans have seen firsthand how Lujan Grisham’s ardent support for gun control hasn’t translated into a reduction in violent crime, and with polls showing a very close race it’s clear that many voters are ready for a real change.

Pepper spray but no guns: New Mexico's most populous county offers workers a sop towards self-defense

August 9, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

Albuquerque, New Mexico set a new record for homicides last year, and unfortunately things aren’t getting any better in 2022. A recent report found that violent crime has increased by 30% in Bernalillo County since 2014, while arrests and convictions are down by roughly the same amount.

Things have gotten so bad that Bernalillo County supervisors are even admitting that county employees are at risk of becoming the victim of a violent crime as they’re making their way to and from the office, but they’re proposing a fundamentally unserious solution to the public safety problem.

Bernalillo County leaders want to amend the county’s weapons policy so employees can carry pepper spray in the event they encounter trouble coming into or leaving work.
According to the proposed policy change, “The county recognizes that employees may encounter unsafe circumstances during their ingress and egress to Alvarado Square. This policy is intended to allow employees to have pepper spray while outside of work in an emergent circumstance.”
Hundreds of employees work at Alvarado Square, the Downtown headquarters the county opened a year ago to consolidate operations previously spread out in multiple facilities. The county bought the building at 415 Silver SW, formerly home to Public Service Company of New Mexico, in 2017 and has spent $72 million on the project so far. The county’s current “Workplace Violence Policy” prohibits employees from having weapons – including “any device principally designed to cause bodily injury” – on county property unless they are law enforcement personnel or have approval to carry a weapon as part of their job duties.
The proposal going before the County Commission Tuesday adds language exempting pepper spray.
“The carrying of pepper spray by employees at Alvarado Square for self-defense purposes is allowable and pepper spray will not be considered a weapon under this policy unless other parameters of this policy are violated,” the proposed new language states.

According to the proposed rule change, if adopted employees would be able to possess a single 3-ounce canister of pepper spray at work but would have to alert the county’s Risk Management team beforehand and would have to keep the pepper spray concealed while they’re at the office.

While it’s nice that the county acknowledges that its employees “may encounter unsafe circumstances” on their way to and and from work, restricting their self-defense options to the use of pepper spray instead of allowing those who possess a concealed carry license to carry on the clock (or at least until they get to the office) is a clear indication that these officials are unserious about the “unsafety” of county employees.

I get that the Democratic-dominated county board of commissioners isn’t going to scrap its gun-free policy completely, but it seems to me that if the county is truly concerned about the safety of its employees there’s another option available to them: set up lockers inside Alvarado Square where licensed concealed carry holders can secure their firearms before they get to their cubicle. That would allow them to exercise their right of self-defense while on their way to and from their job, while still designating the office space inside the county government building a “sensitive place” off-limits to firearms.

Ideally the Bernalillo County commissioners would simply drop the idea of keeping Alvarado Square a victim disarmament zone, but that’s not going to happen unless a court orders them to do so. A more realistic and pragmatic step would be to recognize the threat to personal safety that county employees face before and after they clock in, and to ensure that they have access to the most effective self-defense tool around… as well as their constitutionally-protected right to defend themselves with it. Instead, the county is scheduled to vote on a resolution that acknowledges the threat to personal safety while refusing to give employees the ability to effectively fight back against armed assailants. That’s not a good look even in the best of circumstances, but with violent crime up and arrest rates trending down the proposal is even more insulting to those county employees who want to protect themselves from the growing danger on downtown streets.