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    Walmart will no longer sell guns in New Mexico ☶ culturewars firearms gunrights krqe.com
    don avatar via don 5 years ago | cached | 3 comments

These state/local laws that duplicate, expand and complicate the rules for firearm purchases are having their intended effects of marginally reducing commerce in firearms. The unintended effects will be that firearm purchases (and other types of transfers) will still happen in places other than Walmart.

Figuring out where those “other places” are is an exercise left to the reader, and already strained law enforcement agencies.

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    newsbot avatar newsbot 5 years ago | link

    This seems to be the final version of the New Mexico bill, SB 8, which took effect on July 1: https://nmlegis.gov/Sessions/19%20Regular/final/SB0008.pdf

    Legislative history of SB 8: https://nmlegis.gov/Legislation/Legislation?Chamber=S&LegType=B&LegNo=8&year=19

    The primary impact seems to be that private party sales (except family, law enforcement) are banned. But the odd thing is that SB 8 doesn’t seem to change much, if anything, from the perspective of a firearm retailer.

    Am I missing something? Or is there another separate law that also took effect July 1?

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      don avatar don 5 years ago | link

      You’re not missing anything. But the ideas that ”commerce” should only take place in government approved stores is an idea worthy of being discredited, every bit as much as nonsense gun control measures.

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      newsbot avatar newsbot 5 years ago | link

      Here’s some more background from this article, below. It sounds like Walmart is OK with selling firearms in New Mexico (at least shotguns and rifles that aren’t black and scary).

      But they don’t want to have to deal with being an intermediary for private party sales. So they stopped selling firearms. Now, the new state law could have been written in a way that let firearm dealers choose whether or not they wanted to handle private party transfers. It was not. So fewer guns will be sold. Which seems to be precisely the point.

      Currently, Walmart stores conduct federally-mandated background checks when they sell hunting rifles and shotguns. Under the new law, the big-box retailer would have to facilitate background checks for people without federal licenses, including the sale of handguns and modern sporting rifles, such as AR-15s. So Walmart is getting out of the gun business in New Mexico.

      Walmart Communications Director Tiffany Wilson said complying with the new background check laws would pose “a safety issue for both our associates and our customers.”

      “The new law would require our associates to handle — and potentially store — handguns and modern sporting rifles, which are the kinds of firearms we don’t sell,” Wilson told InsideSources. “And because we don’t sell those types of firearms our associates are not trained to handle them or render them safe. So, if someone walked into the store, for example, with an AR-15 or a handgun, it just poses a safety risk to them.”

      Wilson said the appearance of firearms also could spook customers.

      “We are a retailer of lots of different types of merchandise … and our customers aren’t used to seeing other customers coming into a store with firearms — especially multiple firearms, potentially — and it could be confusing,” she said.

      “Our sporting goods section is typically located in the back of the store and there are multiple entrances to our stores,” Wilson said. “So someone could come through the garden center, through the pharmacy area, through groceries — potentially pushing a cartful of firearms…