Interview with New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence Miranda Viscoli

The organization New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence has been on the radar with negative attacks from New Mexico State Representative John Block of recent. 

Mr. Block has proposed a 25% reduction on sale tax on the sale of a gun and ammunition for this legislative session. No reduction for the purchases of everyday citizens but relief for gun owners. He has attacked the organization and claimed their gun buy back program violates the law. 

In 2016, New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence created the Guns to Gardens buyback program. In New Mexico, it is difficult to get rid of unwanted firearms because of a statute that does not allow law enforcement to easily destroy them. Every unwanted firearm brought into a police station needs a court order of approval to be destroyed as well as a historian to verify that it is not a historical gun. Their Guns to Gardens program addresses a need in communities to get rid of unwanted firearms and in doing so reduced the number of guns in circulation. Fewer guns mean safer communities according to them. The buybacks also help to elevate the conversation on guns. See their report from one of their buybacks: https://shorturl.at/vDNO4

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio was intrigued to learn more about this New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence organization since it seems to upset the radicalized state Representative John Block. Thus Anthony Lucero conducted an interview with Miranda Viscoli on behalf of the group to learn more. Excepts to the interview are found below as well as a link to the complete interview...

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio Anthony Lucero: What is the mission for New Mexicans?

New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence Miranda Viscoli: The mission is to prevent gun violence it's not an anti-gun organization, we work to keep our community safer with gun violence prevention efforts.

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio Anthony Lucero: Your recent event in Farmington was cancelled by the city itself. I understand you still went up there because the public asked you to come up. How many weapons were you able to collect?

New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence Miranda Viscoli:  Oh not that many and we didn't think there would be that many but there were people who had firearms that they really needed to and wanted to get them out of their homes because they didn't feel safe with them. So that's why I went and felt it was our moral responsibility to get those guns out of those homes because that's what they wanted.

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio Anthony Lucero: What is your organizations pay per weapon surrendered?

New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence Miranda Viscoli: Not much it's really a thank you for participating so we don't even pay close to what the gun is worth and in addition to that we don't give cash, we give Gas and Grocery cards depending on the type of weapon surrendered determines the amount we will give to you.- a handguns or $100 for a long gun or pistol $200 for a semi-automatic $250 for an assault style weapon.

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio Anthony Lucero:So as an example for an AR-15 type gun, how does New Mexicans to prevent gun violence purchase these weapons and circumvent the background check requirement?

New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence Miranda Viscoli: There's no need for a background check because we aren't taking firearms, right what we're doing is dismantling on site, so we're not purchasing a firearm and we're giving a gift card as a thank you. The gift card that is not in any way close to what the firearm is worth and they're destroyed on site!

I know everybody wants to think and probably including your station that there was a a transfer of firearms to us and there isn't. 

I wish the naysayers would look at the palpable relief could have seen the palpable relief of these gun owners who simply needed the gun out of their home.

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio Anthony Lucero: Out of respect Miranda I never said any such thing, I simply asked a question. I do understand that sheriff Shane Ferrari is looking into your organizations activities. What do you have to say about that?

New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence Miranda Viscoli: He can look all he wants to.  There's no issue. I would say why is he concerned about us getting nine Firearms out of homes that didn't want them? It is to keep his community safer from gun violence. It seems like he cares more about those nine guns than he does about the safety of his community and that's the reality.

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio Anthony Lucero:Do you have any other events coming up after the first of the year planned?

New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence Miranda Viscoli: We do the majority of the work we do with youth and schools, so we're we're doing gun violence prevention workshops in schools throughout the winter and helping show kids NOT to do something stupid with a firearm. In addition to hat we're doing another gun violence prevention mural and we're working on legislation that's fair legislation with gun owners,  just to help keep our community safer .

Every time I get a press release that talks about another gun found or another gun used at our schools, it breaks my heart. There was one was last week in Albuquerque, granted it was not during school hours where a child was shot, so I think it's a good message to tell kids, that this is not the solution. This is not a way to handle any kind of problems. I mean if I want to do a deep dive on this I think, we have to ask ourselves, how adults in our community, put kids in this situation and and I think we need to walk, in the steps of our youth, because we got them in this situation.

Gun violence is the number one killer for young people and often times it's young people using guns to kill other young people.  They're buying their guns on social media.  If people really want to go after the gun violence the problem in this state and in this country, well let's get rid of the telegraph app because that's where kids are buying and selling guns.

To them3 it's the normal and I  can tell you right now that too many of our kids feel like by the time they turn 18 ,they'll either be dead from gun violence or in jail because of gun violence. 

That's the world we've given them, so we need to ask ourselves as adults in this community what can we do to stop it, and it's not throwing the book at kids! That's only going to create generational trauma, incarceration and you'll have a bunch of young moms and young dads with kids going to jail, and what did you do? You just fed back into the cycle right so what can we do?  Sit at the table and figure out how did we get in this mess.

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio Anthony Lucero: Powerful words and I do agree that something needs to be done. I'm not for taking weapons away from law abiding citizens mind you, but I do think we need to do something to get these kids to stop this, and yes I agree that it does start at home. All moral lessons start at home.

New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence Miranda Viscoli: I would think about the this, that a lot of these young people who are doing unfortunate things with firearms, and we work with them 7 days a week, they don't have parents, maybe an Uncle's raising them, because the parents are incarcerated, maybe nobody's raising them, and they're trying to hide the fact that there are no adults at the table, because they don't want to be separated from their 12-year-old sister who they are taking care of.  We need to walk in those shoes, and we need to walk in the shoes of that 17-year-old who relies on dealing drugs with a firearm because he has no parents and he's taking care of his 12-year-old sister. We failed that kid and that family nd so everybody's has a knee-jerk reaction about dismantling nine guns which is a joke ,and rather than actually how do we look how do we sit at the table right now. How does everybody sit at the table and say let's stop the blame game but do better! Let's help these kids, like where where is is the drug rehab in New Mexico? Where's the mental health help with mental health? Why is it easier to access a firearm than it is a hot meal, or a roof over your head, that's the reality.  So people can sit there and, you know do the blame game, on our nonprofit, which believe me we have heard over and over, or we can all sit down and say, hey you know what collectively as a society, we have messed up, we have failed these kids, how do we get their back so that they don't make these choices? So hey don't have to make these choices.

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio Anthony Lucero: What kind of impact do you feel these gun events, where people surrender their weapons from home. In the big picture what  effect does it have on the big picture of this gun violence at schools and so forth?

New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence Miranda Viscoli: I wish people would come to our gun buybacks. I mean there are 100% anonymous, so we can't have a lot of people there, we're very strict about it being anonymous. When the police and press shows up, we don't even let them take a picture of a car, right they have to be anonymous, but we have literally people handing over Firearms, not wanting a gift card, they need to get the guns out of the house, because their teenage son has suicidal ideas, they need to get it out of the house. because the uncle's going to shoot up the family and they have no place to take these firearms. Because we have a law on the books, that says to law enforcement. if somebody goes, so let's say you have a situation in your home and it's not going well, we all know there are people that shouldn't have guns. There are a lot of people, the majority who are law abiding citizens are fine having a firearm. That's not our problem. Hunters go hunt, like who who cares like go! That's not what we're going at. But there are times in people's life, where they are and should not have a firearm and so somebody can go to the police and say, hey I can't have this firearm in my home anymore. It's no longer safe, well the police have to do a court order to dismantle that gun and get a historian to say that that Glock isn't historic so they virtually make it impossible. The police are already overwhelmed and don't have time to do that type of paperwork. So what these gun buybacks do or take backs or whatever you want to call them, is offer a need in a community to get these guns out of homes. 

... I don't understand the the anger about simply offering people a service they don't have to participate as voluntary, right and we know from our Anonymous survey that the majority of people participating in our gun buybacks do so for safety reasons. We also we literally have mother,s come with a gun that their son or daughter used to kill themselves that's in the evidence box because it's sent back home and they don't know what to do with the firearm. They would never want that to go back into circulation, what do they want to do with it? So we destroy it for them? Why are people so angry about that? I can't speak for thosee people? It's up to each individual to have an answer to that question.

 The wife whose husband used to hunt and now has dementia she needs that gun out of the home, talk to the Widow who doesn't safely know how to use a firearm and was left with a shed full of guns that she doesn't even know if they're loaded, that's who comes to our BuyBacks.

Everybody says this isn't going to stop a criminal. No criminal is stupid enough to go and use a gun in a crime and say Hey I want a Target card. Just a Target card that's not even worth, the gun that they're handing in right. It's about getting those firearms that people simply don't want anymore or maybe never did want, or it's no longer safe to be in their home, and they have no place to safely get rid of it. That's all it is, and that I hope helps well answers a lot of the questions and you are able to share our side.

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio Anthony Lucero: You know as well as I do, the media right now is not painting a very pretty picture of you, so I wanted to reach out and give you an opportunity to share your side, and you have well.

New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence Miranda Viscoli: I'm glad you do and I hope you share it and people can realize that all that misinformation out there isn't true and this is simply a service to the community to get unwanted guns out of homes that's all it is.  You don't have to and if you have an unwanted gun and you choose to sell it and go through a background check, then go do that, nobody's stopping you, nobody cares. But don't get so angry about this. I just wish that people would take a deep breath. 

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio Anthony Lucero:  Would you ever own a gun?

New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence Miranda Viscoli: I'm a gun owner. 

AlamogordoTownNews.com and KALH Radio Anthony Lucero: That answers that.

To hear the full podcast on KRAZY KALH Radio of the interview listen on https://youtu.be/mfARsJU-tIQ?si=Ws-RJPLqOmWhSkyq

More News from Alamogordo

• Tragedy Strikes the Commissioner Burnette Family A Heartfelt Condolences on the Passing of Sadaya Burnette
• Trouble Brewing in the Village of Cloudcroft with Resignation of Police Chief and Multiple Police Officers Mass resignations raise questions about what’s going on in Cloudcroft?