New Mexico’s House of Representatives just dropped a bombshell on the Second Amendment community: their sweeping omnibus gun control package—House Bill whatever-they’re-calling-it-this-week—has been fast-tracked to a hearing this Wednesday in the House Commerce & Economic Development Committee. This isn’t some minor tweak; it’s a laundry list of restrictions straight out of the progressive playbook, including red-flag laws, bans on assault weapons, magazine capacity limits, and probably a side of universal background checks with extra bureaucracy. Last night’s assignment to committee signals the Democrat supermajority is done playing coy—they’re gunning (pun very much intended) for a full-court press before the session ends, leveraging their control to ram it through without much public input.
What’s clever about this timing? It’s peak election-year theater. New Mexico’s blue wave post-2020 has emboldened lawmakers like Rep. Rehm, who’s sponsoring this beast, to virtue-signal hard while crime surges in Albuquerque (homicides up 50% in recent years, per FBI stats). They frame it as common-sense safety, but dig into the source text from the House docket: this commerce and economic committee angle is a sneaky jurisdictional dodge, burying it under business regs instead of the Judiciary Committee where 2A scrutiny would be fiercer. Implications for gun owners? If it passes the House (odds high with their 45-25 edge), it heads to a Senate that’s narrowly Dem-controlled but has shown cracks—recall their 2023 filibuster flop on similar bills. Nationally, this tests the post-Bruen waters; SCOTUS’s 2022 smackdown on sensitive places bans means NM’s inevitable carry restrictions here could fuel appeals all the way to D.C., buying time for grassroots pushback.
2A warriors, this is your wake-up call: flood that hearing with testimony, rally at the Roundhouse, and light up the phones (committee contacts are public on the NM Legislature site). Groups like the NRA-ILA and local arms like NM Shooters are already mobilizing—join ’em. If New Mexico falls, expect copycats in blue states like Colorado and Nevada. But history shows these overreaches often backfire electorally; remember Virginia’s 2021 flip? Stand firm, stay vigilant, and let’s turn this hearing into their Waterloo. Molon labe, Land of Enchantment.
