Governor Johnson Calls Department Of Justice Reporting Requirement An Outrage

July 13, 2011

Posted in Facebook , Gov. Gary Johnson, Liberty , Twitter

Former New Mexico Governor, a strong gun rights advocate, objects to new reporting requirement

July 13, 2011, Santa Fe, New Mexico – Saying “New Mexico gun buyers and sellers are neither the problem nor the solution to border violence”, former New Mexico Governor and presidential candidate Gary Johnson today called on the Obama Administration to reverse its decision to require border state gun stores to report purchases of two or more of certain types of rifles.

Under the new requirement, announced Monday by the Department of Justice, gun dealers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas will be required to report purchases of two or more of some types of rifles by the same person in a five-day span.

In a statement released today, Johnson, who served two terms as New Mexico’s governor, said, “This is the same Department of Justice that thought it was a good plan to intentionally allow hundreds of firearms to be smuggled into Mexico in a disastrous effort to somehow follow the trail of those guns to the bad guys. Now, the DOJ’s plan to address gun trafficking is to require law-abiding citizens in border states to be reported and entered into a federal database for buying perfectly legal rifles from licensed dealers.

“Not only will this requirement do absolutely nothing to curb violence on either side of the border, it is yet another unacceptable infringement on fundamental 2nd Amendment rights. It is an outrage that this Administration is using border violence as an excuse to add the names of more law-abiding gun owners to their database. The President and his Attorney General need to get off the backs of American gun owners, and focus on policies that will actually work to stop border violence – without eroding basic constitutional rights. If we want to reduce violence along the border with Mexico we need to deal with the real cause, and that would be drug prohibition. Let’s legalize marijuana and we would see a 75% drop in border violence overnight.