Commentary
After several road rage cases claimed the lives of children this summer, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham
suspended the open and concealed carry of firearms in Albuquerque and throughout Bernalillo County for the next 30 days. Ms. Grisham’s response will not make New Mexicans safer. Indeed, the opposite is true.
None of the attacks that Ms. Grisham can point to involved permit holders. That’s not too surprising—permit holders in New Mexico and the rest of the country are exceptionally law-abiding. In 2021, there was just
one revocation for every 45,000 permit holders in New Mexico. Nor was that an outlier. In
2019 and
2020, there were no revocations.
For criminals, it is already illegal to carry guns. All Ms. Grisham’s edict does is make it illegal for law-abiding citizens to carry.
Academic research shows that police are the most important factor in reducing crime. However, the police understand that they virtually always arrive at the crime scene after the crime occurs, as one recent road rage incident illustrates. At the end of August, a law-abiding citizen with a permit
used his gun to protect himself from a road rage attack near Isleta Pueblo, New Mexico.
The Albuquerque police department
doesn’t have enough officers to answer every call for help. Police Chief Harold Medina
acknowledges that Albuquerque ranks at the bottom of cities in police officers per capita. And by the
end of 2021, Albuquerque had only 70 percent of the number of police officers
that it should have. When the police cannot protect people, the solution is not to disarm law-abiding citizens.
The average concealed carry permit revocation rate in the 19 states with comprehensive data is one-tenth of 1 percent. Usually, revocations occur because someone moves, dies, or forgets to bring the permit while carrying.
Academics have published 52 peer-reviewed empirical studies on concealed carry. Of these, 25 found that allowing people to carry reduces violent crime, and 15 found no significant effect. A minority (12) observed increases in violent crime. These 12, however, suffer from systematic errors to varying degrees: They tend to focus on the past 20 years and compare states that recently passed concealed carry laws with earlier states that already had those laws. The latter states, where it was more difficult to obtain a permit, had smaller, sustained growth in permits over the past two decades.
The finding that crime rose relatively in the recently adopting states
is consistent with the states having the biggest increase in permit holders having the greatest reduction in crime.
While the Supreme Court would likely strike down Ms. Grisham’s 30-day executive order, the governor may have calculated that the suspension period was too short for the courts to successfully intervene. Assuming that Ms. Grisham doesn’t get a sympathetic trial judge, there might still be time to get a preliminary injunction. But the case would be moot by the time it would get to the circuit court, let alone the Supreme Court.
Police are essential to keeping the peace and bringing criminals to justice, but in most cases, they can’t directly protect people. That’s why Ms. Grisham owes the residents of her state the chance to protect themselves.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
