A Letter To The State Of New Mexico Regarding HB 402

To The House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee & House Judiciary Committee,

I would like to come in opposition of any ban on standard capacity (being what a weapon was designed to hold) or extended magazines ( typically created after the initial design of the weapon, specifically to 'extend' the weapons original capacity). Basically the flaw in logic here is that some how having a specific number of rounds in a weapon will make it more deadly than others.... how is this? The Army had no problem slaughtering the people at wounded knee with what we would call antiquated weapons now. Stalin had no issue attacking Berlin to defeat Hitler with an 'uneducated' force, armed mostly with what are $100 bolt action rifles in today's currency. Anders Brevik had no issue slaughtering all those people in Finland with his Ruger Mini-14 with the 10 round magazines (Finland has a ban on magazines with higher capacities than 10 rounds). The Issue here is not how many rounds a gun can hold, It is totally irrelevant, James Holmes showed in Colorado that Despite having a 100 round Beta Magazine for his AR-15 that simply having a high cap magazine does not mean that you will kill alot of people. Instead most of the injuries sustained in that shooting were from his 12 gauge Remington 870 shotgun. I am not trying to belittle tragedy here, but what I am trying to do is preserve the Rights of the people.


DC vs. Heller (2006), concluded that Every American Citizen has the right to defend themselves. In our state we have provisions for both concealed carry of firearms, and open carry of firearms. How would this effect us? quite simply It would take popular semi-auto handguns and It would limit the ability of the person to defend themselves. My Glock 19; a fairly common handgun owned by both civilians and law enforcement holds 15 rounds. It does not hold 15 rounds by having some sort of extended feeding device, or even through a magazine that sticks way out of the bottom, nor was it even redesigned to hold that many rounds. Simply its what the grip of the handgun provided for. By passing a 'New York Style' magazine ban what will really be accomplished? you took the same gun and put less rounds in the magazine. We have already seen that a midst a full 'assault weapons ban' that Brevik simply carried more magazines. Adding any more laws into the pot will achieve nothing Our state is a shining example of what having an armed populace will achieve Despite the number of weapons per citizen we still have much lower gun deaths than many other states. Why is this? Because the law abiding have the ability to protect themselves.


Taking rounds out of the hands of the law abiding is NOT your job. Neutering the law abiding under the guise of 'public safety' is a far cry from what your actual position as an elected official is. Your Job is to uphold the constitution and ensure that this country moves towards the will of the people within the rule of law. If you have a problem with the second amendment, then I suggest you make a motion to amend it on the federal level and at that point let it be decided by the people. Until then you are bound by the rule of law just like the rest of us. Subverting rule of law and waiting for the supreme court to neuter laws is NOT how the founding fathers intended this country to be run.

In short it has been said by many of the law abiding citizens who have had enough of states and other entities trying to legislate our rights away. "If you outlaw our rights... we will be outlaws" Laws are nothing more than a mutual agreement written down on paper. They dictate behavior, but as a word of caution. King George took us down this path before, and although Colorado, New York, and other states may have 'passed' laws similar to this they know full well these are not constitutional. "Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution limited only the power of Congress and the national government to control firearms, not that of the state."

I could go further here but we would both be wasting our time. In short any infringement of the second amendment is Illegal, and unconstitutional based on already made Supreme court cases. I urge that we take a look into enforcing already established laws and keeping repeat offenders in Jail. What we need to do is give crimes with a deadly weapon felony treatment and throw these offenders away for 10 years or more. Enforce laws like these and we will see improvements in our violence numbers. Also,we need to work on improving our mental health system, Adam Lanza was denied a weapon when he went to buy one. This means we can stop the point of sale. Adding things like universal background checks as we have already concluded will not work simply because we cannot enforce them universally.


Lastly, we need to get rid of our Politically correct attitude and call a spade a spade. We need to encourage people in this state to say something if they see something going on, we have a culture that tolerates violence but refuses to speak up to stop it. This is not just on the domestic violence level, but in regards to mental health and criminal activity.


Gun Owners are friends to the law abiding and the just; We are the Militia, and the keepers of our fine state. If you force us to become outlaws in this state we will become just that. We have already spoken.

Joseph Velvet
Apache Survival Channel