New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department Claims It Has Conducted 53 Inspections of FFLs
Please Report Any Increased Investigative Activities
As NSSF® has previously reported, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and her Department of Health Secretary Patrick Allen have been busy issuing unlawful orders pertaining to a “public health crisis” associated with firearm-related violence. One provision of these orders has continued to direct the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department (RLD) to “conduct monthly inspections of licensed firearms dealers in the State to ensure compliance with all sales and storage laws.”
Because there is no lawful basis whatsoever for such inspections, NSSF asked our members in the state to immediately report any attempted inspections to us so we could initiate legal action to stop the abuse of power. Of course, it was assumed such inspections would involve intrusive requests for dealer records and access to non-public areas of a store or shooting range. After having received no such reports from our members and after hearing of RLD’s claim of 53 completed inspections since the announcement of the Public Health Order, all available evidence points to something quite different.
It seems that RLD inspectors have entered gun stores in the same manner as any other state employees might on their lunchbreak in search of their next purchase for the holiday season. They have not announced their presence and have simply lurked in the hopes of detecting some sort of violation of non-existent state law pertaining to firearm transfers and storage on the premises of an FFL. RLD states that a “report will be made to the Department of Public Safety (DPS) and ATF” if its inspectors detect anything suspected to be illegal.
Unlike the mystery perusal of a store by some state employees, RLD inspectors using state resources to initiate state and federal investigations of federally licensed dealers is extremely concerning to NSSF. For this reason, please immediately report any indications of increased incidents of ATF inspections or DPS investigations.
You may make such a report by calling Darren LaSorte at 469-445-0808 or emailing him at dlasorte@nssf.org. |
