CNN’s Poppy Harlow interviewed New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) on Tuesday and cornered her, reading the New Mexico Constitution to her on-air and asking if her ban on concealed carry violates the Constitution.
Harlow read from Article II, Section 6, of New Mexico’s Constitution, saying, “No law shall abridge the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms for security and defense…No municipality or county shall regulate, in any way, an incident of the right to keep and bear arms.”
She then asked Grisham, “Are you not in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and your state’s Constitution?”
Grisham responded, “I don’t believe that we are.”
She then claimed that “if that narrow reading of the constitution” were followed, New Mexico “wouldn’t have universal background checks…wouldn’t have a waiting period…wouldn’t have a red flag law…we wouldn’t have prohibitions for straw purchases, none of those would have been deemed constitutional, and today, all of them are.”
Harlow shot back, noting that all the gun controls mentioned by Grisham were adopted prior to the Supreme Court of the United States’ (SCOTUS) decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022), which ruled against New York’s proper cause requirement for concealed carry permit issuance.
In another portion of the interview, Harlow pointed out:
The Supreme Court, last year, totally changed what we’re allowed to do and what you’re allowed to do [via NYSRPA v. Bruen]. They said unless you can base it in the history and tradition, you don’t have grounds to do something like this.
New Mexico Governor @GovMLG joined me this morning for her first national televised interview since she declared a public health emergency and announced a 30-day ban on carrying guns in public. pic.twitter.com/u9ar8EODU1
— Poppy Harlow (@PoppyHarlowCNN) September 12, 2023
On June 23, 2022, the day the NYSRPA v. Bruen decision was handed down, Breitbart News noted that Justice Clarence Thomas pointed to District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), noting in those cases, SCOTUS “recognized that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense.”
He then turned his attention to NYSRPA v. Bruen, saying, “In this case, petitioners and respondents agree that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense.”
Thomas observed, “We too agree, and now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”
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
