New Mexico’s San Juan County Sheriff’s Office is investigating whether New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence (NMPGV) violated the state’s universal background check law to acquire firearms the group highlighted on social media.
NMPGV acquired the guns via a buyback event that had been cancelled. They highlighted the acquisition on a December 16, 2023, post to X:
Pictured are unwanted firearms from one household in Farmington, NM. Our gun buyback was cancelled by the City, but local residents asked us to show up anyway. So, we spent today dismantling guns house by house. #GunsToGardens @vivarioarriba pic.twitter.com/YlgwT9qaxV
— NMPGV (@NMPGVnow) December 17, 2023
The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that San Juan County Sheriff Shane Ferrari is now looking into the matter, to be sure NMPGV went through the proper background checks to acquire the guns.
Ferrari said, “I don’t have anything against the New Mexicans [to Prevent] Gun Violence folks, I just need to make sure they’re operating lawfully like everyone else.”
New Mexico state Rep. Stefani Lord (R) called for New Mexico State Police to investigate NMPGV, saying they “should investigate a private party going door to door and sawing people’s guns in half without doing a background check as required for a transfer in New Mexico,”
UPDATE: New Mexico Sheriff has opened an investigation into whether anti-gun group illegally purchased guns in violation of Universal Background Checks during a "buyback" and failed to destroy these firearms in a legal manner 🤦♂️
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) December 18, 2023
⁰
YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP
😂 https://t.co/p54S7QkaXP
NMPGV championed the universal background check legislation when it was moving through the state legislature.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
