Mayor lifts gun ban at Town Council meetings

SILVER CITY - On Tuesday night, Silver City Mayor James Marshall quickly rescinded a ban on bringing weapons into Silver City Town Council meetings that he had enacted at the Jan. 10 town council meeting.

Mayor Marshall addressed a full room of residents at Tuesday's night's town council meeting, telling attendees he was going to "take back" the ban and later explained he realized it was unconstitutional, based on a New Mexico Supreme Court case, Baca v. New Mexico Department of Public Safety.

Marshall said he had a whole week of support, with one or two emails a day coming from residents saying they totally supported not having weapons at town council meetings. But then, after word got around and his intent was misinterpreted, opposition started rolling in.

It didn't help that the NRA apparently sent out a postcard to their chapter members in the Silver City area code with some misinformation, the mayor said.

The postcard, which the mayor said he saw, told residents that Marshall had intentions of joining the Mayors Against Illegal Guns group, a national organization of city mayors who promote tougher federal, state, and local gun regulation.

"My statement was that I was approached by the organization to sign on for Silver City and I was requesting input on whether it was a good idea or not," he said.

The mayor said Tuesday night that he is a gun owner and he had no intention of violating anyone's constitutional rights, including his own, or the

three-fifths of the council who are also gun owners. He said his intent, with enacting the ban, was just to make council meetings as comfortable an environment as possible for people to voice their opinions, and that he had been approached in the past by someone who had told him they felt intimidated by someone wearing a weapon at a town council meeting, but he didn't know who that person was with the weapon, and whether it was an undercover police officer.

Marshall said he started aggressively receiving emails opposing the ban on Monday.

"Some were very professional and educational on why this banning guns at council meetings was not a good idea," he said.

Some supported the ban on guns in council meetings but asked why he would he join the Mayors Council Against Illegal Guns.

"Some of them were just really aggressive, like if I want a New York-style gun ban I should move to New York," he said.

But the issue - and the ban - became moot when he discovered that New Mexico case law had already deemed that type of ban unconstitutional.

Baca vs. New Mexico Department of Public Safety states "the Legislature's delegation of authority to local governments to prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons in Section 29-18-11(D) violates the constitutional proscription against municipal and county regulation of an incident of the right to keep and bear arms in Article II, Section 6 of the New Mexico Constitution," and that the "Section 29-18-11(D) is not severable from the remainder of the Concealed Handgun Carry Act and that the Act as a whole is therefore unconstitutional."

The mayor said he appreciated the public's feedback.

"I'm not anti-gun," he said. "I support the Constitution. It was a shame that there was so much misrepresentation and assumptions made. The intent was that people not be intimidated."

*Source: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/nm-supreme-court/1377808.html

Christine Steele can be reached at (575) 538-5893 ext. 5802

Source: http://www.scsun-news.com/ci_19823086?source=rss_viewed

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