http://youtu.be/dIw9R9YY0MM
New Mexico State University Police Chief Stephen Lopez hosted a forum with criminal justice students to review the history of gun legislation in the United States and address firearm safety concerns. Lopez, an NRA member himself, said gun control is not a black and white issue.
“It’s not just people that are on one side of the issue or the other,” Lopez said. “Most people are in favor of felons not having firearms. However, somewhere in that spectrum that’s where people start falling off and it’s important for people to be able to identify where they are and look how they can find common ground with people.”
One student in search of common ground is criminal justice senior Chad Faubion, who plans on going into law enforcement after graduation.
Following the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., President Trump directed the Department of Justice to develop regulations to ban bump stocks, an accessory used by the Las Vegas gunman to kill 58 people in the largest mass shooting in American history. Faubion said restrictions are not the answer.
“The man who’s not going to kill someone with a bolt-action rifle is not going to kill someone with a machine gun with a suppressor on it,” Faubion said. “Items don’t cause evil thoughts. We need to control who has firearms, not what anyone can get.”
Major retailers including Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods have stopped selling guns to anyone under 21 years old. Faubion said age restrictions should be enforced equally across the board.
“Science tends to back up the idea that we are not fully mature until about age 25. However, in order to do that, we need to be consistent. We can’t have inconsistent laws. If someone’s not mature enough to own a firearm, then they’re not mature enough to vote and they’re not mature enough to die overseas for the country, that’s a simple reality,” Faubion said.
According to 2016 data from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the United States ranks 31st in the world in gun violence with 3.85 deaths per 100,000 people. But compared to other developed nations, the U.S. is a stark outlier with a gun violence rate 8 times higher than Canada, 32 times higher than Germany and 55 times higher than the United Kingdom.
In New Mexico, about 18 per 100,000 people die from firearms according to 2016 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s the 8th highest rate in the country.
The New Mexico Injury Prevention Coalition hosted a conference to approach gun violence prevention from a public health perspective. Among the speakers was State Senator Bill Soules, who said guns are a public health crisis.
“I’m a gun owner, but we need to have reasonable gun control,” Soules said. "In the United States it is way above every other country and there’s no reason for that and lots of the violence and deaths we see from guns are absolutely preventable and responsible gun control measures are a way of doing that.”
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence recently released its annual gun law scorecard, which ranks all 50 states on the strength of its gun laws. New Mexico received an “F” grade and was ranked among the 10 worst states for gun safety.
New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence co-president Miranda Viscoli said to keep guns out of young hands, child access prevention laws need to be passed in every state.
“What that means is if you’re a gun owner and your gun gets in the hands of a child and they hurt themselves or somebody else, you’re held accountable. I can promise you that will get gun owners to start locking up their guns,” Viscoli said.
Representatives from the Las Cruces Public Schools Student Advisory Council recently made their voices heard in Santa Fe to advocate and help pass Senate Memorial 8, which requests the Public Education Department and Legislative Education Study Committee to study and evaluate potential solutions to decrease the rate of suicide by firearms and gun violence in schools.
53 percent of those who died by suicide from 2012-2016 used a firearm according to the New Mexico Department of Health. Soules said the way to decrease instances of gun violence going forward is through legislation.
“Absolutely the changes have to do with legislation and legislation has to do with voting,” Soules said. “There’s a major election coming up this November and we’ve seen out of Florida the amazing students, we’ve got students locally, students are going to force us to change our laws because they are sick and tired of what’s been going on and it will change things and it’s going to change through young people voting because they do not want this to continue through their society.”
There’s growing support for gun control measures. A Quinnipiac University poll finds 67 percent of Americans support a ban on assault weapons and 83 percent support a waiting period for all gun purchases.
