Just Deserts: New Mexico Governor Grisham’s Authoritarian Power-Grab Has Crashed and Burned

By Rob Morse

What do you do when bad political decisions get set into dogma? If you’re a Democrat politician, then you ignore the facts and blame the people that your donors love to hate. That’s exactly what we saw play out as a result of the violence in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

To start, violent crime has been surging in Albuquerque for years. The first rule of politics is that you can’t appear powerless or irrelevant. Political reality, though, rears its head and even the governor is precluded from doing what works to reduce crime. So why did the Governor ban honest gun owners from carrying in Albuquerque?

It must be sad to be Democrat Governor Michelle Grisham.

The obvious response would have been to arrest violent inner-city criminals and gang-members who break the law. Unfortunately, Democrat talking points claim that unequally applied law enforcement is a root cause of the violence rather than one of the solutions.

Democrats are supported by an urban voter base so they can’t arrest these violent criminals and risk alienating a core demographic. Democrats had a narrow urban base of support in 2020, and Covid allowed millions of us to leave the city and work remotely.

Hapless Governor Grisham can’t blame the victims and claim they shouldn’t hang out at the wrong clubs late at night or call it the wrong place at the wrong time. Most of the victims are inner-city residents. Many are immigrant minorities. Democrats can’t afford to alienate these voting blocks either. The most recent victims that triggered the Governor’s power-grab were young children including an 11-year-old boy who was reportedly shot during a road rage incident.

The Governor didn’t think she could blame the economy and the lack of employment opportunities since Democrats own the White House, the US Senate, and control law all of the branches of New Mexico government. She couldn’t blame open borders and unchecked illegal immigration for driving down the average wage. The slipping job market isn’t a winning issue since it’s a problem created by the Governor’s own party (see: New York Mayor Eric Adams).

Grisham didn’t dare blame parents or schools. Democrats have led the charge in saying that parental arrangements are all the same. Some have even said that fewer parents in the home could be better than the intact, married, two-parent family since broken families leave more room for social workers and teachers to “fix” any bad beliefs that may be held. Given the donations of teachers unions to the Democrat party, Grisham certainly couldn’t blame teachers.

That means New Mexico’s Governor lives in a political house of mirrors where all past vices now point right back at her. She was out of political options, so she blamed the inanimate objects, guns.

Except that doesn’t really hold up to even the most cursory examination.

Violent crime is localized to failed Democrat controlled cities while legally-owned firearms are ubiquitous. Licensed concealed carriers are more law abiding than the police. By a huge factor, licensed concealed carry holders stop more violent crimes than they cause. Grisham  depended on a complicit news media to bury those facts for her. While that works most of the time, it doesn’t work all the time and the blowback this week came fast and furious.

Grisham’s executive order to disarm honest citizens wouldn’t have actually reduced violent crime. She admitted that. It was intended to provide cover for failed Democrats and get more campaign donations from anti-rights billionaires like Michael Bloomberg.

We’ve seen how cities become uninhabitable when criminals aren’t prosecuted. San Francisco and Seattle are some of the fastest shrinking cities in the US. Cities are shockingly dangerous when you don’t raise children in an intact family. Yes, a village can raise a child, but they do it badly and feral children become dangerous adults. There’s no substitute for two parents, and I’m saying that as an adoptive parent and a foster parent.

Governor Grisham’s executive order to ban licensed concealed carriers from Bernalillo County and the city of Albuquerque never passed the smell test, even if it diverts some attention away from the Democrat mayor, the city council and the political mess they’ve made.

The Governor got virtually no support from anyone, even on her side of the aisle. And after six lawsuits and a temporary restraining order blocking the gun rights suspsension, she was forced to “amend” her public health order.

That kind of public humiliation is the perfect outcome given the twisted and cynical politics of the day. Now, Governor, maybe you can look at the ongoing violent crime in Albuquerque and blame the judge. You’ll probably claim — without evidence — that your executive order would have saved lives if only he hadn’t blocked your “emergency” order. The sycophant media are sure to nod their heads in unison and agree while the rest of us try to clean up your mess.

This article originally appeared at Slow Facts Blog and is reprinted here with permission.