Rights versus "Public Health"

The governor of New Mexico has issued a decree purporting to "suspend" the right to carry a firearm in Albuquerque -- most famously the site of Bugs Bunny's repeated failures to take the right turn -- after a series of shootings.  I say "purporting to" as an antidote to the news reports, which breathlessly claim that she did "suspend the right," as if that were something she has legitimate power to do.

I don't have the figures in front of me, but my guess would be that approximately zero percent of the shootings were the product of people lawfully carrying firearms using permits. None of the stories in the press sound like they were the products of people with concealed carry permits: they sound like a collection of mostly crimes and a few accidents that wouldn't actually be affected by this edict at all. 

I do see that several law enforcement leaders have already said they won't enforce her unconstitutional order, that lawsuits are expected, and that there is talk of impeachment for having issued it. Those things are good. 

Supporters are not bothered by either the unconstitutionality nor the fact that it wouldn't have any effect on the actual problem, and instead resort to genuinely stupid mottos.

Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, applauded the governor’s order as a courageous and necessary step to curbing gun violence, even if its legal fate is uncertain.

“If it saves one life, then it’s worth doing,” she said.

Normally I try to refrain from calling my opponents stupid, but that rhetoric is not compatible with thought. Here's a humorous video illustrating the point.

Of interest, though, is that the purported excuse granting the governor power to ignore the constitution and basic rights is "public health." 

The firearms suspension, classified as an emergency public health order, applies to open and concealed carry in most public places, from city sidewalks to urban recreational parks.

One might give a slippery slope argument here -- at first they're just going after guns which they never thought of as a 'real' right, but if you let this stand they might use 'public health' as an excuse to go after First Amendment rights like religious exercise or Free Speech. One might, except that of course it's the other way around: they started with religious exercise and free speech, as well as freedom of movement and association and other rights. 

That was during the COVID period, of course, and although many expect a renewed attempt to restore COVID restrictions in order to -- frankly -- defraud the 2024 election using similar measures to the 2020 one, the circumstances are different. In 2020, COVID was novel virus apparently leaked from a bioweapons lab: we had no natural immunity to it, and no idea how horrible it might prove to be. It was rational to treat it like a genuine emergency. These days, almost everyone has been exposed to COVID and has natural antibodies; there are also, er, treatments available some of which are apparently better than others. It's annoying to have what amounts to a second flu, which will kill a certain number of people every year as the flu does, but it's not an emergency on the same scale as before. 

Still, the idea that the COVID emergencies allowed the camel to get its nose into the tent should be alarming. "Public Health" was used as an excuse to limit even the most basic freedoms, by pure executive orders like this one. This was done, and enforced, even in cases like this one where the evidence strongly suggested that the order would have no effect on public health ("wear one of those cloth masks you made at home, or maybe a bandana") or kept in force long after they had proven to have no effect.

There is a reasonable debate -- allied to the general discussion we are having about anarchism and volunteerism -- about whether a government is necessary to address genuine emergencies like the Black Death, and if so what powers it should have for that purpose, for how long, and what limits it should be required to obey even in such an emergency. Actions like this one are well outside the parameters of any such reasonable discussion.