TPOL is well-known for trashing New Mexico, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque.

Rob Morse wrote this commentary, and TPOL has some additional comments at the end.

What do you do when bad political decisions get set into dogma? If you’re a Democrat politician, then you ignore the facts and blame the people that your donors love to hate. That is exactly what we’re seeing play out in the violence in Albuquerque, New Mexico. To start, violent crime has been surging in Albuquerque for years. The first rule of politics is that you can’t appear powerless or irrelevant. Political realities rear their head and even the state governor is precluded from doing what works to reduce crime. So sad to be Democrat Governor Michelle Grisham.

The obvious thing to do is to arrest violent inner-city criminals who break the law. Unfortunately, democrat talking points claim that unfair law enforcement is a root cause of violent crime rather than the antidote to stop it. Democrats are supported by an urban voter base so they can’t arrest these violent criminals and risk alienating their demographic. Democrats had a narrow urban base of support in 2020, and Covid allowed millions of us to leave the city and work remotely.

The 2020 election map: Red GOP Blue Demo

The poor governor can’t blame the victims and claim they shouldn’t hang at the wrong clubs late at night; calling it the wrong place at the wrong time. Most of the victims are inner-city residents. Many are immigrant minorities. The democrats can’t afford to alienate these voting blocks either. The recent victims were young children in their home or innocently at play, so this is the opposite of gang-on-gang violence.

You can’t blame the economy and the lack of legal employment since Democrats are in the White House and the US Senate, and Democrats also control all the branches of New Mexico government. You can’t blame open borders and open immigration for driving down the average wage. The slipping job market isn’t a winning issue since it is the problem you created after you took over from Republicans and the Trump economy.

You don’t dare blame the parents or schools. Democrats have led the charge in saying that parental arrangements are all the same. In fact, fewer parents in the home are probably better than the intact, married-two-parent family since broken families leave more room for social workers and teachers to “fix” any conservative political beliefs. Given the donation of teachers unions to the Democrat party, you wouldn’t want to ever blame teachers.

That means you live in a political house of mirrors and all your past vices now point right back at you. You are out of political options, so you have to blame the inanimate objects like guns, except that doesn’t hold up to even the quickest examination.

Violent crime is localized to failed democrat controlled cities while legally owned firearms are ubiquitous. Licensed concealed carriers are more law abiding than the police. By a huge factor, licensed concealed carry holders stop more violent crimes than they cause. You’re depending on a complicit news media to bury those facts for you. While that works most of the time, it doesn’t work all the time.

Your executive order doesn’t need to actually reduce violent crime. You’ve admitted it won’t in news interviews. Your order only needs to provide cover for the failed democrats and get you more campaign donations from anti-rights billionaires like Michael Bloomberg.

We’ve seen that cities are uninhabitable when you don’t prosecute criminals. San Francisco and Seattle are some of the fastest shrinking cities in the US. Cities are shockingly dangerous when you don’t raise children in an intact family. Yes, a village can raise a child, but they do it badly and feral children become dangerous adults. There is no substitute for parents, and I’m saying that as an adoptive parent and a foster parent.

In this case, Governor Gresham’s executive order to ban licensed concealed carriers from the city of Albuquerque*1 didn’t pass the smell test even if it helps the democrat mayor and city council out of the political mass they’ve made. The county sheriff isn’t supporting it.*2 The optics look so bad that the state’s democrat attorney general can’t support it. Even a federal judge issued a restraining order stopping law enforcement officers from enforcing the governor’s order. *3

That is the perfect outcome given the twisted and cynical politics of the day. Now, governor, you can blame the judge and claim your executive order would have saved lives. The sycophant media are sure to nod their head and agree while the rest of us try to clean up your mess.

Notes and comments from TPOL:

*1 Actually ALL of Bernalillo County: as you can see in the map below, only about 1/5 of the County is also in Albuquerque. The five Pueblo tribal nations that own part of the County probably will go along with the Empress of New Mexico, but there are many areas outside the City and Reservations.

*2 Neither is the Albuquerque police chief, the Attorney General, or the County DA. The only major law enforcement agency that is apparently willing to is the New Mexico State Police, which has an evil reputation for many of us.

*3 We’ve been unable to find any detailed info on exactly what parts of the decree were not put on hold. Possibly the parts dealing with drugs, but it is not clear. We do note that many online articles call this decree what it is not: “law.” Also note that the judge’s injunction expires on 3 October: by that time, the initial 30-day period is nearly over, but this might encourage her to extend it (as many of us think was her plan).