Federal appeals court halts New Mexico's seven-day gun waiting period, says it's 'likely' unconstitutional

[Muss Muggins]

So i actually have some input on this:

Although I agree it's not necessarily consistent with the Constitution, I think there is absolutely a case to be made for imposing a reasonable waiting period on **specific** weapons, such as a semi-automatic rifle or pistol, or a weapon with a magazine in excess of 10 rounds, for persons under the age of 25 and whom do not possess a license to carry or have an active affiliation with a law-enforcement organization or the written approval of a chief of police/sheriff/etc.

yes, it's an infringement. But waiting periods for youth can help to interrupt episodes of psychosis, and it isn't unreasonable to ask for someone to wait 1-2 weeks before picking up a weapon designed to burn through bullets like it's going through Fallujah '04. Just my 0.02 cents…

A person under the age of 25 is not a youth . . .

 

[Rocketmedic40]

A person under the age of 25 is not a youth . . .

Buuutttt they do medically have an incompletely-developed frontal cortex; demonstrably less impulse control and Other Things To Do.

That's why I think there should be a reasonable waiting period for certain things for younger people.

 

[roysha]

Buuutttt they do medically have an incompletely-developed frontal cortex; demonstrably less impulse control and Other Things To Do.

That's why I think there should be a reasonable waiting period for certain things for younger people.

You may have a point there. Reading you posts leads me to believe you must be about 21 years old or so and that would explain why they are pure nonsense.

 

[ColoCoug]

I I mean, it's just an idea. Clearly, armed guards and thoughts and prayers are less effective than we'd like to see, and I think there's a strong argument to be made that freedom is not necessarily the thunder dome either. I think that sensible nationwide legislation that somewhat throttled immediate access to certain weapons might help mitigate some of the worst tragedies, particularly if it's coupled with carrots, like nationwide concealed carry reciprocity in constitutional hard stops to protect the right to bear arms, ammunition, and ensure that states or municipalities cannot creatively use laws to remove weapons.

Same as every other gun control argument – the absolutists on both sides will ruin everything for everyone because they will take a maximalist approach and refuse to even consider the consequences of their desires.

We gun people have had it pretty good for the past 10 years. A relatively 2A friendly government has been in power, we've had some court cases go our way, and the American public is largely become frustrated, and given up on the more grandiose streams of the baby boomer generation with regards to gun control. But, our community has largely squandered those victories. We have no far reaching legislation to protect them, just court cases that can be overturned by law or by a different court. We have not codified national protections for gun owners in any meaningful sense via legislation, and we have allowed ourselves to become distracted by novelty toys like binary triggers. Our community squanderers political capital by trying to defend the stupidest and most gratuitous excesses of gun owners. Then we double down on hard-core partisanship by largely choosing the Republican Party and dismissing any prospect of Democrat support for gun rights, even as the social and political pendulum slowly swings away from Donald Trump and the Republicans. It's exactly like a championship team blowing most of the salary cap on an aging running back when half the defense just hit free agency.

And someday, that recalcitrant defiance and failure to actually win is going to hurt us badly. The kids who grew up with school shootings as a real possibility are now voters, the elders who remember the student rifle club are hitting nursing homes and disappearing from the public. Our community has done very little to foster any non-military positive connection with firearms for the vast majority of America's youth for my generation onward. And because we have so foolishly put gun rights as a partisan litmus test, and so steadfastly refused to even consider any sort of address for the legitimate grievances of our fellow citizens, we is a gun community are eventually going to reap the consequences of our stubborn behavior. And we will deserve it.

I'm in my mid 30s. I have a fairly decent collection of firearms, and I like to think of myself as a responsible gun user. Plenty of us are out there, but we are also not immune to the pressures of society, and at the end of the day, we do have a tomorrow that we need to accommodate for. If some political and legislative horse trading can get me the legislative wins for the things at the core of the second amendment, I think there is ample room for compromise to introduce things that are scientifically demonstrated to reduce the incidents of misuse and limit the accessibility of weapons to people who objectively should not have them.

I'm not talking about gun bans, or registrations or licenses, or confiscation. I'm talking about rationed access to firearms that are objectively capable of putting out far more fire power than is needed for any conceivable hunting or self-defense need. Just like how we don't allow untrained people to get behind the wheel of a truck going down the freeway, we as a society don't necessarily benefit from a 23 year-old mentally ill person buying a rifle mechanically capable of firing hundreds of bullets in 2 to 3 minutes into a crowded building. Sad fact of the matter is, that doesn't happen with a manually actioned firearm, not to the same extent.

Descriptions of the scene from the first responders to Sandy Hook described the bathroom at the class that got annihilated as a "blender", where the shooter had dumped magazines into densely packed kindergartners. That's a terrible demonstration of the lethal efficiency of modern firearms design. And I'm not saying that we should ban those as a society. I'm just pointing out that the performance offered by weapons platforms like that is in the public interest to regulate, just like how we is a public regulate, our freedom to travel by banning bicycles from interstate freeways and keeping commercial jet liners from the hands of the untrained while flying over our homes.

I fully expect the mods to delete this because it's not along the lines of conventional orthodoxy on this board, and I apologize if it does seem political. To reiterate, I think that striking down the New Mexico waiting Period is a bad
idea, because I think the state was on to something.

Thank you, @Rocketmedic40. I wish I had written that. I especially agree with the comment that the absolutists are hurting the situation. Those who consider any laws affecting firearms ownership to be unacceptable are pouring gasoline on the fire of gun control. That position is no longer tenable in today's world. The voters of tomorrow will demand changes in law, and I believe the firearms tragedies of modern times are accelerating that movement. I think absolutism is not a long term solution.

 

[wrhk33]

A good friend of mine has a Q. clearance, owns machine guns and silencers, has a collection of over 100 guns. What good does a waiting period do in his case? I know many people that have many guns, the waiting period does no good in their case. Each anti gun law takes some freedom away with the admitted goal to have no guns in society. I don't care either way about hunting and when people bring hunting up as a reason to own guns I know right away that they are lacking in the basic knowledge of why we have the 2nd Amendment. I question the life experience of the people that pass gun laws. I would bet many have never fired a firearm nor purchased one. How can you be for harder background checks when they have never done one. Many gun owners don't understand how many gun laws we have to live by. Long guns have one set of import rules while pistols have another set of laws. Many crimes in NM are commited by under age males. They can kill someone with or without a gun and the general sentiment by the lawmakers is to give them a second chance.

 

[Ματθιας]

Buuutttt they do medically have an incompletely-developed frontal cortex; demonstrably less impulse control and Other Things To Do.

That's why I think there should be a reasonable waiting period for certain things for younger people.

I bough an AK when I was still in high school in the early 90s. I had it on layaway and picked it up the day I turned 18. Not once did I consider using to shoot up any place or anybody. So that theory goes out the window.

 

[Ματθιας]

So, I did a transfer today, but the FFL said they weren't clear about the injection so they were doing the 7 day waiting period regardless. I was told that despite the injunction, they weren't willing to risk their FFL. The explanation didn't make sense to me and I didn't push the issue. Their store, their rules.

 

[LVSteve]

Plenty of good folks from broken homes and bad ones from nuclear families, brocifer. In fact, the rose-colorized "nuclear family" is quite literally a product of the Atomic Age alone…prior to that, it was normal for one or both parents to die early, remarry, blend families, kids to relatives, etc. The whole "nuclear family" concept from the Wonder Years where Mom stays home, Dad works 40-50 hours a week at a respectful job that keeps everyone fed and housed and the kids all salute the flag and play baseball and go out with Susie for Apple pie at the church bake sale might have existed for some people for like 15 years from the end of WW2 to the Sixties, at best, and even then it was largely a product of propaganda and American copium to make ourselves look better than the Russians.

It also has nothing to do with guns or violence.

I may not agree with what you say on new gun law, but you sure hit the nail on the head with your Nuclear Family comments. Late wife #1's family came from Iowa, and the people up there were always telling me about their perfect Mayberry style life from the 60s and even 70s. Apply some alcohol and the truth started to emerge, like the bent county sheriff and how grandad's hunting "accident" while out alone got swept under the rug. There was clearly an attitude of "bad stuff doesn't happen in middle America", and the illusion was to be maintained at all costs

My late sister in law knew all about that. On one summer vacation visit to Iowa she woke up to one of her cousins giving her a proper groping. She shoved him off and told her mother in the morning. Mother's comment? "Don't tell your father, he will get mad and it will spoil the vacation." Spoil it for who? You can't make this stuff up.

The lies were no better in the UK. In 1957 the Prime Minister declared "You've never had it so good," and for some that may well have been true. It was probably much better than in the 30s, but then it should be. Odd then that if the country was so prosperous, it was downsizing the armed forces and canceling high tech projects left and right.

 

[rwsmith]

I wonder if 'waiting periods' ever prevented a crime, or just delayed it?

 

[Rocketmedic40]

I bough an AK when I was still in high school in the early 90s. I had it on layaway and picked it up the day I turned 18. Not once did I consider using to shoot up any place or anybody. So that theory goes out the window.

And the shooters that did Columbine. uvalde, Santa Fe, Parkland, et al did the same…and then they did harm people. I'm not saying that youth shouldn't be allowed to purchase semiautomatic rifles; I'm pointing out that they should involve parents, law enforcement or other responsible people in their purchase. A parent, clergy, a LEO, judge, mayor, etc.

 

[hkcavalier]

Just because young adults these days tend to be seriously immature, and many of them have mental issues, doesn't mean we constrain the Bill of Rights.

The government of the United States works as intended for a generally good, moral people. It doesn't work when there's a significant minority of bad, immoral people, and completely falls apart when there's a majority like that. When the average young American picks and chooses what laws they will follow, and cops & judges refuse to enforce laws they don't like, we become like Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Guatemala.

 

[Rocketmedic40]

You may have a point there. Reading you posts leads me to believe you must be about 21 years old or so and that would explain why they are pure nonsense.

Given that

I wonder if 'waiting periods' ever prevented a crime, or just delayed it?

A good friend of mine has a Q. clearance, owns machine guns and silencers, has a collection of over 100 guns. What good does a waiting period do in his case? I know many people that have many guns, the waiting period does no good in their case. Each anti gun law takes some freedom away with the admitted goal to have no guns in society. I don't care either way about hunting and when people bring hunting up as a reason to own guns I know right away that they are lacking in the basic knowledge of why we have the 2nd Amendment. I question the life experience of the people that pass gun laws. I would bet many have never fired a firearm nor purchased one. How can you be for harder background checks when they have never done one. Many gun owners don't understand how many gun laws we have to live by. Long guns have one set of import rules while pistols have another set of laws. Many crimes in NM are commited by under age males. They can kill someone with or without a gun and the general sentiment by the lawmakers is to give them a second chance.

I'm not advocating a waiting period for all persons in all cases. I am advocating a waiting period for persons under 25, persons purchasing a semi automatic weapon, and to have conduits available to bypass the waiting period if appropriate.

If you're a scared young woman needing a pistol for personal protection, I don't think a waiting Period is a good thing. If you're an angry young man, looking to purchase a fire on, I think a waiting period is an absolute necessity.

In a sane world, gun sellers would be far more engaged in evaluating the people that they sell guns to and would be far more willing to say no, but that would require them to defy both the absolutely vital profit motive that is free enterprise and is still quite fallible and vulnerable to social pressure.

@roysha; sir, that is both undignified and uncalled for. You know nothing about me, just as I know nothing about you. given that you won't be around to see the political pendulum shift away from its current direction, I really don't think that you should have much of an input in the firearms policies of the 2030s and beyond. The maximalist, unrestricted things you advocate have proven to be disastrous and lethal for thousands of people and damaging to the second amendment community as a whole; you're just lucky enough to have avoided the consequences of "shall not be infringed" which have and will fall squarely on my generation in those to follow.

You didn't have to do active shooter drills in school. I did, and it was a real threat. Not some pie in the sky "the Russians might nuke us, and everyone might die", but a very real threat that one of your classmates, or some random person, Might decide to come in and execute you and your classmates for no reason whatsoever. That affects people in a very real way, and you would be insane to think that they would want to pass that fear onto their own children.

The only reason it isn't a bigger rally and public outcry is because everything else is melting down at the same time. And if you think there won't be real social and political consequences for all of the chaos being inflicted by the elderly boomers running the government, you're downright senile.

The backlash against the 2A is going to be packed right in with backlash against the rest of the GOP portfolio, and it's a direct result of "shall not be infringed" and our tone-deaf, partisan response to legitimate issues with a free market for weapons designed specifically for modern infantry combat.

Edit: and before you pull your boomer stress card of "but the Cold War and the Cuban missile crisis!", let me know precisely how many American schools and cities got bombed and/or invaded by the Commies, and no, Red Dawn and the TOS episode where the Commies and Yanks are fighting it out don't count.

 

[Ματθιας]

Given that



I'm not advocating a waiting period for all persons in all cases. I am advocating a waiting period for persons under 25, persons purchasing a semi automatic weapon, and to have conduits available to bypass the waiting period if appropriate.

If you're a scared young woman needing a pistol for personal protection, I don't think a waiting Period is a good thing. If you're an angry young man, looking to purchase a fire on, I think a waiting period is an absolute necessity.

In a sane world, gun sellers would be far more engaged in evaluating the people that they sell guns to and would be far more willing to say no, but that would require them to defy both the absolutely vital profit motive that is free enterprise and is still quite fallible and vulnerable to social pressure.

So, in your mind, anyone under 25 is not responsible enough to buy a firearm? Good luck with that.

 

[Rocketmedic40]

So, in your mind, anyone under 25 is not responsible enough to buy a firearm? Good luck with that.

Not what I'm saying, at all. I'm saying that people under 25 should generally have a waiting period to purchase a semiautomatic firearm unless they have an LTC, police service or military service with an NCO's approval, approval from a clergy member, mayor, LEO/sheriff, judge, doctor, Congresscritter or parent. If they don't, have them cool their heels for 2-4 weeks, then come get their gun. Don't want to wait? Get a letter as described above, or pick a revolver or manually-actioned firearm.


It's not perfect. It doesn't stop crime, and it doesn't stop long-laid-out plans, but it stops things like Uvalde and Parkland. Heck, maybe everyone should be subject to a similar waiting period and requirements?

I don't know the ultimate best answer, but I do know that our community gathering around to celebrate the shut-off of what appears to be a prudent, moderate and reasonable idea to help prevent a mass shooting is a poor look for us and that we will eventually come to regret celebrating it when society turns squarely against us.

 

[Ματθιας]

Not what I'm saying, at all. I'm saying that people under 25 should generally have a waiting period to purchase a semiautomatic firearm unless they have an LTC, police service or military service with an NCO's approval, approval from a clergy member, mayor, LEO/sheriff, judge, doctor, Congresscritter or parent. If they don't, have them cool their heels for 2-4 weeks, then come get their gun. Don't want to wait? Get a letter as described above, or pick a revolver or manually-actioned firearm.


It's not perfect. It doesn't stop crime, and it doesn't stop long-laid-out plans, but it stops things like Uvalde and Parkland. Heck, maybe everyone should be subject to a similar waiting period and requirements?

I don't know the ultimate best answer, but I do know that our community gathering around to celebrate the shut-off of what appears to be a prudent, moderate and reasonable idea to help prevent a mass shooting is a poor look for us and that we will eventually come to regret celebrating it when society turns squarely against us.

That's exactly what you're saying, with a bunch of qualifiers/approvals/letters.

You actually think someone is going to stick their neck out, legally, and give "approval" for someone who may or may not do something for a firearm? Seriously!?

I don't think what you're proposing is prudent moderate or reasonable. I'll what others won't, it's silly. I don't care how it looks, to anybody, and what society thinks.

 

[Rocketmedic40]

That's exactly what you're saying, with a bunch of qualifiers/approvals/letters.

You actually think someone is going to stick their neck out, legally, and give "approval" for someone who may or may not do something for a firearm? Seriously!?

I don't think what you're proposing is prudent moderate or reasonable. I'll what others won't, it's silly. I don't care how it looks, to anybody, and what society thinks.

And that is why the Democrats and anti-gunners will eventually win…we as a collective refuse to regulate ourselves, and the consequences are lethal for the public.

Perhaps if someone isn't willing to vouch for a person to immediately procure a semiautomatic weapon, that person has a reasonable idea that the buyer shouldn't have a weapon in the first place…

 

[rrb357mag]

The usual response of ersatz gun guys is "We need to have a conversation about gun control". Well, we've been having one for the last 50 years and it's the same old story..."Reasonable restrictions"? Reasonable to who? The real problem with guns and everything else in America is Lawyers. Everything we do, say, eat, buy, sell, gets lawyers involved. It is why you buy a power washer and inside is a book of 20 pages of complete crap to cover the manufacturer's behind from some ambulance chaser. Everything the voters approve is subject to the approval of lawyers. Appointed judges do their best to control things regardless of what the people want. Don't forget that the judges are lawyers, the prosecutors and defenders are all lawyers, the dopes who write these stupid laws are lawyers....it's a club and we are not in it. Lawyers add almost nothing but they take every time. This country is a confused mess because of all of these non-additive important people...Old people like me remember what a free country looked like and we are anything but free today...

Biden was gun friendly? That's a joke.

 

[45Smashemflat]

Sounds like another version of the Trolley problem to me.

Option one, no waiting period, and nut case can buy the evil AR15 and go kill much many

Option two, have waiting period, and said nut case can buy a lever action and just kill much. (Or, he is a patient nut case, and just delays his rampage 7 days.)

Note that the most recent event's perpetrator documented what he was planning over months… 7 day waiting period?

 

[Navy vet]

I I mean, it's just an idea. Clearly, armed guards and thoughts and prayers are less effective than we'd like to see, and I think there's a strong argument to be made that freedom is not necessarily the thunder dome either. I think that sensible nationwide legislation that somewhat throttled immediate access to certain weapons might help mitigate some of the worst tragedies, particularly if it's coupled with carrots, like nationwide concealed carry reciprocity in constitutional hard stops to protect the right to bear arms, ammunition, and ensure that states or municipalities cannot creatively use laws to remove weapons.

Same as every other gun control argument – the absolutists on both sides will ruin everything for everyone because they will take a maximalist approach and refuse to even consider the consequences of their desires.

We gun people have had it pretty good for the past 10 years. A relatively 2A friendly government has been in power, we've had some court cases go our way, and the American public is largely become frustrated, and given up on the more grandiose streams of the baby boomer generation with regards to gun control. But, our community has largely squandered those victories. We have no far reaching legislation to protect them, just court cases that can be overturned by law or by a different court. We have not codified national protections for gun owners in any meaningful sense via legislation, and we have allowed ourselves to become distracted by novelty toys like binary triggers. Our community squanderers political capital by trying to defend the stupidest and most gratuitous excesses of gun owners. Then we double down on hard-core partisanship by largely choosing the Republican Party and dismissing any prospect of Democrat support for gun rights, even as the social and political pendulum slowly swings away from Donald Trump and the Republicans. It's exactly like a championship team blowing most of the salary cap on an aging running back when half the defense just hit free agency.

And someday, that recalcitrant defiance and failure to actually win is going to hurt us badly. The kids who grew up with school shootings as a real possibility are now voters, the elders who remember the student rifle club are hitting nursing homes and disappearing from the public. Our community has done very little to foster any non-military positive connection with firearms for the vast majority of America's youth for my generation onward. And because we have so foolishly put gun rights as a partisan litmus test, and so steadfastly refused to even consider any sort of address for the legitimate grievances of our fellow citizens, we is a gun community are eventually going to reap the consequences of our stubborn behavior. And we will deserve it.

I'm in my mid 30s. I have a fairly decent collection of firearms, and I like to think of myself as a responsible gun user. Plenty of us are out there, but we are also not immune to the pressures of society, and at the end of the day, we do have a tomorrow that we need to accommodate for. If some political and legislative horse trading can get me the legislative wins for the things at the core of the second amendment, I think there is ample room for compromise to introduce things that are scientifically demonstrated to reduce the incidents of misuse and limit the accessibility of weapons to people who objectively should not have them.

I'm not talking about gun bans, or registrations or licenses, or confiscation. I'm talking about rationed access to firearms that are objectively capable of putting out far more fire power than is needed for any conceivable hunting or self-defense need. Just like how we don't allow untrained people to get behind the wheel of a truck going down the freeway, we as a society don't necessarily benefit from a 23 year-old mentally ill person buying a rifle mechanically capable of firing hundreds of bullets in 2 to 3 minutes into a crowded building. Sad fact of the matter is, that doesn't happen with a manually actioned firearm, not to the same extent.

Descriptions of the scene from the first responders to Sandy Hook described the bathroom at the class that got annihilated as a "blender", where the shooter had dumped magazines into densely packed kindergartners. That's a terrible demonstration of the lethal efficiency of modern firearms design. And I'm not saying that we should ban those as a society. I'm just pointing out that the performance offered by weapons platforms like that is in the public interest to regulate, just like how we is a public regulate, our freedom to travel by banning bicycles from interstate freeways and keeping commercial jet liners from the hands of the untrained while flying over our homes.

I fully expect the mods to delete this because it's not along the lines of conventional orthodoxy on this board, and I apologize if it does seem political. To reiterate, I think that striking down the New Mexico waiting Period is a bad
idea, because I think the state was on to something.

I know I am probably catch flack, its imo that our red flag laws suck ***! When we are filling out our federal form to purchase a fire arm, it clearly asks if you are currently or have been treated for mental illness. Everyone always sau no. Even those who are total wack jobs. If that offends you, too bad, get over it! It's the truth! IMO the mental health system must report who is being treated. Of course they are hiding behind the HIPPA laws. Now I am a true 2A believer and carry every day, even at church. Of course those shooters purchased the weapon legally. We as far as the government knows, because the government doesn't know you are crazy because your shrink isn't telling anyone. Just like in Maryland, when purchasing a handgun, after the 7 day wait you get an email from MSP that states "Congratulations yyyou have not been disapproved" It's all political. Just so they can say "Thet person was never approved to purchase a handgun."

 

[willt]

If it has not been said before, gun shows are starting to fade away in New Mexico. A lot of the vendors, who might be from out of town dealing with customers who also might be from out of town, are losing sales because the wait period makes transferring a firearm much more difficult and/or expensive.