Alamogordo NM
1-31-2024 11:15am

Bill to Ban Guns at Polling Places Advances in the New Mexico Legislative Session of 2024

John Block differs with Justice Clarence Thomas who specifically named polling places as a location where the government retains the ability to restrict gun possession.

A bill to ban firearms at polling places and near ballot drop boxes won the endorsement of New Mexico's state Senate in response to concerns about intimidation and fears among poll workers in the runup to the 2024 election.

The bill now moves to the state House for consideration after winning Senate approval on a 26-16 vote, with all Republicans and one Democrat voting in opposition. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has signalled her support, putting the bill on a limited agenda for the 30-day legislative session.

Why a need for the bill? A dozen states including conservative states such as Florida, Georgia, Arizona and Georgia prohibit guns at voting locations, as legislators in several other states grapple with concerns about the intersection of voting and guns in a polarized political climate. 

As votes were tallied in the 2020 presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, armed protesters carrying guns gathering nightly outside offices where workers were counting the votes in states including Arizona, Nevada and Michigan to decide who won the White House.

Armed vigilantes in tactical gear were spotted lurking around a ballot drop box in Maricopa County, Arizona during the election of 2022. For those individuals that feel intimidated when guns are present impossible for them view this incident as anything other than blatant voter suppression.

Just a few days earlier, a voter reported being approached and followed at a second voting site in Maricopa County by an individual carrying a gun. The anxiety grows directly out of the Big Lie of a “stolen” 2020 election that has sent misinformed extremists into the street to counter a threat that doesn’t exist.

Some Americans believe that Second Amendment rights have no boundaries except when it comes to former non-violent felons. In that case the pro-gun lobby is all about restrictions on who owns a gun. 

A pure constitutionalist however would deem it appropriate for anyone over the age of 18 to own and be able to use a gun regardless of past circumstances. The prohibition against non-violent offenders not being allowed to have guns stems of racism as a higher percentage of people of color are incarcerated and convicted of felonies. 

Thus, the punitive laws that prevent an ex-felon that has completed probation to not have a gun is a punitive law with racial undertones dating back to the civil war.

Even under the most expansive reading of the Second Amendment, the government retains the power to prohibit gun possession in sensitive places. Polling places have always been viewed as sensitive places. Guns as intimidation practices at polling places dates back to the Jim Crow South when people of color would register to vote or attempt to vote and be met by a crowd of gun slingers at the door of the polling place used as a method of discrete voter intimidation though not necessarily always avert.

According to a Brennen Center brief, Courts have agreed for more than a century that this includes polling sites. A Georgia court in 1874 called gun ownership at voting sites “improper” and “wholly useless and full of evil.” 

Even this year with the decision of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen which hosts the broadest interpretation of the Second Amendment ever adopted by the Supreme Court; Justice Clarence Thomas specifically named polling places as a location where the government retains the ability to restrict gun possession. 

That the government can keep guns away from voting locations is historically uncontroversial, of course, that is excepting for the New Mexico legislature. In the New Mexico legislature John Block and the Otero County delegation of Senators along with some others seem to disagree with the wisdom of their conservative compatriot Supreme Court; Justice Clarence Thomas.

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