The bill is filed. The first committee is assigned. Four legislators are proud to be on the governor’s call to hear only certain bills. And I feel victimized all over again.
I can’t help but analogize the introduction of this bill as akin to blaming a rape victim for her attire. Once again, our legislators wish to victim-blame and hold already responsible small business owners to a higher standard than the criminals that laugh in their faces.
Let’s discuss the bill. Most pro-Second Amendment folks and organizations will immediately focus on the bill’s attempt to eliminate the sale of gas-operated semiautomatic firearms that either have a detachable magazine, or a fixed magazine holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Of course, it impugns on our unalienable rights under the United States Constitution to keep and bear arms.
The Second Amendment did not qualify the type or number of guns I am allowed to own or why. As a taxpayer, I am discouraged that my tax dollars will be used, to great excess, for my home state to proudly fight for this when it is sued for unconstitutionality.
Perhaps I can hope that the entire bill won’t proceed because at least a few legislators won’t want to ruin their perceived perfect record of all their bills thus far meeting constitutional scrutiny.
But what most of those gun rights advocates will miss is the greater portion of the bill that has direct and much more lasting impacts on my family’s way of life. You see, this bill does not just go after “assault weapons” as laymen would point to. No, instead it predominantly targets gun store owners, small businesses like ours they would like nothing more than to push out of business. It’s brilliant, really.
Even if the bill is de-scoped to remove the blatant attack on the firearms themselves, it will likely make the business of selling firearms to law-abiding, background-passing, waiting-day-period-complying citizens unsustainable because the costs for us to comply with these new state mandates will likely bankrupt those of us with mom-and-pop stores across the state.
It’s second semester economics – choke out the supply and it doesn’t matter what the demand is, you will have effectively eliminated that corner of the market. In this case, that is eliminating the availability of guns to New Mexico residents who wish to hunt to fill the freezer, protect their families against the violent crime waves banging on our doors, or invest in a piece of our nation’s history.
What is apparent is that the authors of the bill did not consult any firearms dealer or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives in drafting this bill. You see, licensed federal firearms dealers are already required to comply with extremely stringent operating, reporting and inspection requirements.
Most of the bill is either redundant to or contradictory of requirements already in place for us from ATF. Some of the bill is good. I actually agree with a portion of the training requirements, except they missed an opportunity to require training of the employees and instead insist on training for the FFL holder we already receive through ATF.
Instead of making the good call that gun store owners should train new employees about how to identify a straw purchase or a customer in crisis, they fell short and simply reiterated ATF requirements covered under federal law.
But what does the state have in mind for our training requirements? That, too, is left open-ended for possible onerous demands to be developed in the future.
I also agree with the signage requirement – we should inform our customers about responsibilities of gun ownership and associated laws, but do we now also have to develop a training course for each customer to comply with this new state law?
This is the most nerve-wracking part: there are a number of areas that leave compliance and regulations ambiguous, with requirements “as determined by the department” of public safety at the state level, as well as the attorney general. What this means is, they will inspect and impose additional security measures at their discretion, with no regard for the costs to a small-business owner trying to feed his children.
The most financially costly portion to dealers and perhaps the most egregiously repellant to individual liberties includes reporting requirements to the state, made weekly to identify customers and their purchases, thereby creating a de facto state-level firearms registry. Additionally, the bill seeks to blatantly supersede ATF in regulatory authority over federal firearms dealers.
So, I return again to the victim-blaming. We’ve dumped tens of thousands of dollars into security at our business, with more planned just as soon as we save a little money for those costs to perpetually fortify. We were burgled by criminals with no fear of consequences (and little hope that will be addressed during this same legislative session). And now the state is trying to tell us that it was all our fault.
Shawna Pfeiffer is a life-long Dona Ana County Resident, graduate of NMSU, small business owner, hobby farmer, dog-lover, outdoor enthusiast and mother to two young children. She can be reached at srpfeiffer1@gmail.com.
