Last week, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham created a firestorm with an executive order suspending for 30 days the right to concealed or open carry of a firearm in Bernalillo County (where Albuquerque, the state's most populated city, is located). In her order, Grisham declared gun violence to be a "public health emergency," using recent fatal shootings as examples and citing statistics showing that gun violence is the leading cause of death for New Mexicans under age 19. Possession of firearms has been lawful in the United States since the country was founded. And yet we did not have the problem with gun violence even just a few decades ago that we have now. Why aren't we asking "why?" What has changed? We should be at least as interested in explaining the violence as we are in passing laws trying to prevent it.
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