As concerns continue to circulate about the potential for serious violence in connection with elections here in the U.S., state legislators in New Mexico are advancing legislation that would impose new limits on carrying firearms near polling places on Election Day and during early voting. The new set of restrictions would also extend to drop boxes used for ballots.
In 2022, there were concerning reports in Arizona of sometimes armed individuals essentially staking out drop boxes amid false claims of fraud. Some conspiracy theories have specifically involved the allegedly fraudulent usage of such boxes, something that’s never been proven on a systematic or even wide scale — though Trump’s circles have batted around a movie, “2000 Mules,” claiming otherwise without clear justification.
The proposed ban was approved by New Mexico’s Senate, leaving it up for consideration by their state legislature’s other chamber. Guns — whether carried covertly or openly — would be generally banned within 100 feet of polling places. Restrictions would block firearms within 50 feet of drop boxes. New Mexico legislator Peter Wirth, a Democrat currently leading the state Senate, “said the bill responds to political constituents working at polling places in 2022 who felt intimidated by people who brought in guns,” the Associated Press reported.
There’s other precedent, too, like the firearms and other weapons in the crowds that descended on Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, specifically in outrage over the election results from months prior.
Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked in the Trump White House and participated in the presidential team’s movements on January 6, 2021, has accused former President Donald Trump essentially of knowingly batting away the assemblage of weapons among supporters of his in D.C. that day, many of whom traveled to the Capitol and joined the massive mob’s confrontation with police. Some went from Trump’s large, outdoor rally in the city that day to the complex. The idea in Hutchinson’s retelling is that Trump was characteristically interested in beefing up the crowd visuals for that rally, accordingly reacting antagonistically to security precautions.
