New Mexico is considering what I’ve come to think of as being among the “standard slate” of gun laws. Primarily, a red flag law and a safe storage law, which are two of the more popular efforts gun control proponents have been pushing throughout the nation.

However, a group of New Mexico sheriff’s are making a stand against these measures.

Twenty-nine New Mexico sheriffs oppose several new gun control laws introduced by the New Mexico state legislature. “You’re just taking guns out of law-abiding citizen’s hands,” Lea County Sheriff Corey Helton. “This is not going to affect the criminals out there. They’re going to be able to get guns and they do not follow the law.” Lea County Sheriff Corey Helton is one of dozens of sheriffs who signed this statement by the New Mexico Sheriff’s Association targeting four gun related bills as ineffective.

Two important things to note about this.

First, 29 of New Mexico’s sheriffs oppose these measures. This is a state that only has 33 counties. In other words, just four counties aren’t represented in this group.

That’s an important point. It indicates that the vast majority of the counties themselves don’t support laws like this. It also represents points of potential resistance to any laws being passed. At least one Sheriff has already vowed not to enforce the law.

“I’m proud to say I’m a constitutional sheriff and I’m just not going to enforce an unconstitutional law,” Helton said. “My oath prevents me from doing that.”

Maybe it’s my military time where I was taught to never give an order you know won’t be obeyed, but the idea of passing a law that won’t likely be enforced through most of the state strikes me as completely stupid.

Then again, this is gun control we’re talking about, so stupid is a given.

Second, the lawmaker who proposed the red flag law is laboring under the delusion that such a law was needed to stop the Parkland massacre. Unfortunately for her, though, there were already plenty of laws on the books that would have stopped the Parkland killer…if only they’d been enforced by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. Instead, they ignored multiple reports of domestic violence and let the killer’s rage build unchecked.

The efforts by lawmakers not just in New Mexico but throughout the nation seeks to penalize people who did nothing wrong because of a law enforcement failure in one county in Florida.

I’m sorry, but that’s not even close to being right.

Of course, again, this is gun control we’re talking about here. It’s not like there’s a history of actually blaming the people responsible for atrocities in that crowd, now is there?

I applaud these sheriffs on their stand. It’s one that needs to be made and I sincerely hope lawmakers in the state will consider the massive opposition by law enforcement as they proceed forward on these horribly misguided bills. If there’s a problem in New Mexico, there are other ways to solve it besides taking away people’s Second Amendment rights.