New Bill Takes Aim At Parents Who Let Their Kids Shoot A Gun In This State

A New Mexico Senator is trying to strip away parental rights by making it a crime to teach your children how to shoot guns. This alarming bill, SB 224, would also regulate how New Mexicans store their firearms. 

Democrat Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez introduced the anti-Second Amendment legislation that would also curtail how people parent in the southwestern state. 

Firearms Storage Mandate

The storage mandate portion of the bill would make it illegal for children under 12 to handle a firearm, including any firearms belonging to the child’s parents. It also would require those children 12 and up to take a firearms safety class before legally holding a gun. 

Lopez wants children to become “authorized users” before the state will allow parents to teach them how to properly handle guns. 

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The mandate reads:

“It is an offense for a firearm owner or authorized user to store or keep a firearm in any premises unless the firearm is secured in a locked container or secured by a gun lock or other means so as to render the firearm inaccessible or unusable to any person other than the owner or other authorized user.”

NMSSA Responds To Second Amendment Infringement

This is not only an infringement on our Second Amendment rights, but also the rights of parents to raise children as they see fit. New Mexico Shooting Sports Association (NMSSA) is alerting parents of the need to strongly oppose this bill. 

“You would become a criminal for taking your child to go shooting if they had not previously taken some kind of formal class,” NMSSA warned. “The bill is an uneducated attempt to demonize firearms … It is already a crime to place a child in a situation that endangers their life, this law does nothing to add to a child’s safety.”

NMSAA also is pointing out that the law would require the government to visit homes to enforce this legislation.  

“The law is completely unenforceable unless they plan on going door-to-door inspecting firearm storage in your home. But this bill again goes beyond what they have attempted in the past. If a prohibited possessor gains access to your firearm you are liable as well.”

This bill will run in the face of both parenting and the Second Amendment rights of New Mexicans. Teaching children how to properly handle firearms will allow them to have a lifelong respect of how they are safely used.

This Senator wants to strip parents of that decision.