Tyrants Gonna Tyrant: Public Health Emergencies And Civil Liberties
Out West in New Mexico (pronounced Meh-he-co), the people of the state for some reason elected a broad named Michelle Lujan Grisham to be their governor. Because she lives in New Mexico, she leaves her maiden name (Lujan) prominently presented to appeal to her mestizo constituents, and apparently the Lujan family are some kind of swarthy skinned New Mexico equivalents of the Kennedy family in Massachusetts. Anyway, she got all sad because the gangbangers in her state can’t shoot for shit and keep capping li’l chidlins.
A bit of background, according to the USCCA New Mexico is a “shall issue” concealed carry state, based on a law that was passed in New Mexico and signed into law. It is also legal to carry openly without a license, another law codified in New Mexico code. You may also carry in a vehicle without a permit or license. You do have to take classes and stuff, it isn’t a “constitutional carry” state but still, by state law carrying firearms in a variety of ways is permitted.
Along comes the head of the New Mexico gynocracy declaring a “public health emergency” and ordering a “30-day ban” on carrying firearms.
Stunning. Brave. Illegal. From the linked AP article….
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public across Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least 30 days in response to a spate of gun violence.
The Democratic governor said she expects legal challenges but was compelled to act because of recent shootings, including the death of an 11-year-old boy outside a minor league baseball stadium this week.
Lujan Grisham said state police would be responsible for enforcing what amount to civil violations. Albuquerque police Chief Harold Medina said he won’t enforce it, and Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said he’s uneasy about it because it raises too many questions about constitutional rights.
https://archive.vn/ohvlI
I assume the lawsuits have already been drafted and/or filed. Not to mention that the chief of police in Albuquerque and the sheriff of the county where Albuquerque is located have both basically said they aren’t going to bother with it. In short, her order doesn’t have the force of law, won’t be enforced by the cops and is patently a violation of state law.
So what is the point?
The obvious one is virtue signaling: “See, I am doing something!”. No one thinks it will do anything and it can’t be enforced anyway but it demonstrates that Michelle Lujan Grisham CaresTM and Caring is all that matters.,
More important, it builds on the Covid precedent that says you can suspend civil liberties and the law in the event of a “public health emergency”. Those three magic words are like a royal writ to allow wannabe tyrants to circumvent petty little obstacles like the Constitution. Governor Grisham seems like a dimwit bimbo so I am sure she didn’t come up with this idea on her own. Someone Grima Wormtongued it into her ears and she dutifully scribbled her name on the paper.
Covid lockdowns weren’t the point in and of themselves, the point was the creation of a new backdoor to get around civil liberties and using “public health emergency” powers is the key. I wrote about this a few times in 2020 and 2021 as we began to see a push for redefining “racism” as a “public health crisis”, something supported by the American
MarxistMedical Association (see: Gulags Are A Go). I wrote in June 2020, in the wake of Western Rifle Shooters original page being deplatformed: Free Speech Is CancelledThe push to suppress free speech is not restricted to social media. In neighboring Ohio, the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus proposed a resolution to declare the wrong opinion to be a disease.
Ohio Democrats push to declare racism a public health crisis
As usual the Republicans in Ohio are tripping over themselves to not appear racist and GOP Senate President Larry Obhof is going to have an actual meeting with the Black Caucus and treat their suggestion as if it is serious.
If you have a couple of synapses firing, there is an obvious question here. How is “racism”, an amorphous term that means something different to every person you ask and at best measures an attitude, a “public health crisis”? How is it a health issue at all?
It isn’t and no one is pretending it is. It serves a different purpose that has nothing to do with the public health.
What it would do is provide a pretext for stifling free speech and neutering the First Amendment by labeling speech that runs counter to the accepted narrative as no longer free expression but a matter of “public health”.
If you can suspend civil liberties and the rule of law because of a “public health emergency” and “racism” is a PHE, then you can arrest people for saying something that hurts the feelings of a black person. The American Medical Association says so!
As usual, the bigger issue is not the headline. The actions by the matronly governor of New Mexico are silly and won’t even be enforced. The Big Issue is that we continue to see Them pushing to use “public health emergencies”, often defined as issues that have nothing to do with “health” as a pretext to shutting down free speech and violating civil liberties.
Covid wasn’t the end of this, it was only the beginning. Watch for a lot more of this in the next 12 months.