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 Albuquerque” and “increased inmate population at the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center.” More people locked up seems like an odd measure of success. How many were violent criminals who already should have been locked up, with or without the public health order, and how many were simply armed citizens who – aside from violating the governor’s order – had no mischief on their minds?

Other accomplishments include “fewer gunfire incidents in Albuquerque, as reported by the city’s gunshot detection system” and “increased public awareness about the serious issue of juveniles being detained for gun possession.” Fewer gunshots and fewer kids toting deadly weapons (at least, that’s what one hopes is meant by the “increased awareness” line) are certainly positive outcomes.

The gun “buy-back” stats are interesting though. Apparently, the state hosted so-called buy-back events – a misnomer, since the government didn’t own the firearms to begin with. Anyway, Governor Grisham boasts of removing more than 1,700 guns from the streets through these programs. With all this combined, the total number of homicides must have dropped significantly, right? Well, that depends on your definition of significantly.

According to the Albuquerque Police Department, there were 121 murder investigations in 2022 and just 97 in 2023. 2024 isn’t over yet, of course, but the homicide numbers released as of August 29 show that the APD already had 61 murder investigations for the year.

Similarly, The University of New Mexico’s Office of the Medical Investigator (OMI) released its own tracking earlier this month. OMI counts total homicides, which lumps murders in with self-defense and officer-involved shootings. Their stats show a total of 128 homicides for 2021, 170 for 2022, 150 for 2023, and 102 this year up to October 10. So, while Albuquerque remains well above the national average for these kinds of violent deaths, things do seem to be improving slightly.

But can Governor Grisham take credit? As Liberty Nation News reported when she first issued the order, the 2023 homicide numbers were already down 11% from the previous year at the same time. Still, if the homicide count remains reduced for this year as well, the governor can brag that it’s because there are 1,700 or more fewer firearms on the streets. If it rebounds, well, she’ll no doubt say it’s because the public gun ban expired.

More of a Fight Than She Bargained For?

When Governor Grisham first issued the order back in September of last year, Liberty Nation News suggested she may have bitten off more than she could chew. At the time, the governor declared that she welcomed the fight. Well, she asked for a fight, and she got one. Gun rights advocacy groups filed lawsuits, GOP legislators threatened impeachment, and even many in her own party said she was going too far.

Grisham managed to stave off impeachment – but that would have been a tall order, given the Democratic Party’s control of the state government. Her order wasn’t overturned entirely, but it was narrowed greatly in scope so that it only applied to certain public spaces in Albuquerque, not all of Bernalillo County in general. The meaning of temporary, was certainly tested, as well. Initially, Grisham instituted the order for just 30 days. But that was more than a year ago, and the order only just expired earlier this month.

So why not renew the order now? Yes, it’s unconstitutional. Sure, it disarms potentially law-abiding citizens who carry daily for the sake of self-defense in one of the most dangerous cities in the nation. But Grisham is a progressive anti-gun politician, and such concerns over fundamental human rights didn’t stop her before, in this or any other anti-gun endeavor.

Perhaps she figures 20 or 30 fewer murders a year in a city of more than half a million people is good enough. Maybe she bit off more than she could chew and gave in rather than continue the fight. Or, perhaps, this was simply a test run to see how an order fully disarming the people would go over.