While you were sleeping: NM House committee narrowly advances gun bill

After hours of debate Wednesday evening, the New Mexico House Commerce and Economic Development Committee voted 6-5 to advance a bill that would further regulate gun dealers across the state and ban the sale of certain types of firearms and accessories.

Senate Bill 17 has faced plenty of narrow votes since its introduction. Lawmakers first announced their intent to pursue the legislation in December, when a report from the national gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety found that New Mexico showed many troubling indicators of an outsized gun trafficking problem.

Supporters say the bill is meant to address “straw purchases” — when someone buys a gun on behalf of someone who legally cannot and then sells it to them under the table. Many of the guns found at New Mexico crime scenes were recovered within just 50 miles of the retailer that originally sold them, the report said.

Earlier this month, SB17 passed the Senate Judiciary Committee by just two votes after committee Chair Sen. Joseph Cervantes (D-Las Cruces) said he thought some of its provisions were unconstitutional. He still voted to advance it.

And over the weekend, it cleared the Senate floor on a close 21-17 vote.

Several of the lawmakers on the House Commerce committee Wednesday shared his ambivalence. While many lawmakers on both Senate and House committees have expressed support for the bill’s provisions to train and regulate dealers in part by requiring them to secure and meticulously log their inventories, they said they were concerned about legal challenges to the ban on .50 caliber rifles, magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition and certain gas-operated firearms.

Before advancing the bill, the committee struck down a Republican amendment that would have stripped it of its language that bans certain firearm sales.

“My vote was a very difficult decision. Normally, if I think a bill has some constitutional problems, I would normally not vote for it,” Rep. Marian Matthews (D-Albuquerque) said after casting her “yes” vote. She recalled how her grandfather killed himself with his shotgun when she was a small child. “I simply can’t vote to allow the continual proliferation of more and more guns in our society.”