We need officials seeking to reconcile and harmonize diverse interests rather than profit from further anxiety and doom mongering.
I’m a bit late to this party. Charles Cooke did a very Charles Cooke job on Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico and her proposed 30-day ban on carrying firearms in public. Much as I sympathize with the intent to get a handle on gun violence in Albuquerque, this “public-health order” is flagrantly unlawful.
But what really gets me is how politically reckless it is. I think only the absurdity of the way in which she announced it, and the flippancy with which she also expected it to be thrown out by the courts has prevented this from turning ugly fast. “Hi, I’ve suspended your Second Amendment rights on a public-health basis, after a years long public-health emergency that was characterized by arbitrary government,” is the sort of thing that I expect to provoke people to action. A sizable portion of men and women in this country view the Second Amendment as their guarantee against a tyrannical government. Executive edicts that purport to suspend this right will predictably set some citizens talking to each other in Jeffersonian terms about how to keep the tree of liberty alive in this unusual season. If you don’t want people to get crazy, don’t just — without warning — start kicking them in the throat.
Our political culture is in dire need of restraint. We need elected officials to cease using the other side’s provocations as an excuse to push the envelope further. We need officials seeking to reconcile and harmonize diverse interests rather than profit from further anxiety and doom mongering. I hope New Mexico’s people will show restraint where their governor has not.