The Santa Fe County Board of Commissioners are calling on federal and state governments to enact stricter gun-control laws, including a ban on so-called "assault rifles."
Recent shootings in Santa Fe and nationwide have local officials calling on the federal and state governments to shore up gun-control laws, while Santa Fe County and the City of Santa Fe move forward with a violence prevention initiative.
The Santa Fe County Board of Commissioners adopted a resolution Tuesday, urging lawmakers at the state and federal levels to enact “common sense” gun safety measures, citing the rate of shooting deaths in the US as a primary concern. According to data from the CDC, there were 45,222 gun-related deaths in 2020 in the US, ranking it among the highest in death per capita. In 2020, New Mexico had the eighth-highest rate of gun deaths nationally.
“So what we’ve crafted here is suggestions that do not violate the Second Amendment, anyone’s right to go hunting or otherwise possess a firearm legally, but are measures that would keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them,” District 5 Commissioner Hank Hughes said in the Tuesday meeting. “As we know, mass murders are happening at a regular basis in our country. Some of the most shocking ones have occurred just in recent months, and we’re not immune from gun deaths in New Mexico…”
The country has seen several mass shootings this year, reigniting a decades-old debate around stricter gun laws. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in May in Uvalde, Texas. That same month, 10 Black people were killed at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. On the Fourth of July, a gunman killed seven people attending a parade in Highland Park, Illinois.
Santa Fe has seen a string of youth gun violence cases over the last few years. The most recent: Andres Griego-Alvarado was shot and killed inside a vehicle parked outside of a smoke shop on Airport Road earlier this month. (Another teen has been charged with murder in that case.)
Commissioners are asking Congress to pass laws requiring universal background checks for all firearm sales, banning “assault rifles” (though that distinction is not defined in the resolution) and high-capacity magazines, creating a federal red flag law, banning firearm sales to people convicted of domestic violence and memorializing a 10-day waiting period for gun purchases.
If Congress won’t do it, the resolution says, the state Legislature must.
“I know that we as a county do not have any control over gun usage in our county, but what we have found as a board of county commissioners is that bringing resolutions forward that we can push up the ladder to our state and federal partners actually does mean something,” District 2 Commissioner Anna Hansen said.
After they passed the resolution, commissioners heard from Chanelle Delgado of the county’s Community Services Department, who provided an update on the Youth and Community Violence Prevention Initiative created by the county and City of Santa Fe. The program’s goal is to expand violence prevention education, ensure young people have safe and welcoming public places to connect and increase meaningful employment for people under 25.
Delgado said the county and city are working on a memorandum of understanding and will contract with an organization to set up a Violence Prevention Unit with six employees. Funding for the program will come from county and city coffers, while the groups look for grant money and plan to request funding from the state Legislature.
To address youth violence specifically, Delgado said, the program will look to recruit at-risk youths to better understand what leads to violent crime.
“I think when it comes to violence, we have the direct, blatant violence that’s happening in our community; then we have the violence that kind of goes under the radar, like we have young people carrying weapons in their vehicles, not necessarily in an act of violence, but as a safety precaution,” she said.
