Last week, 11-year old Froylan Villegas was fatally shot outside a minor-league baseball stadium in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A month earlier, five-year-old Galilea Samaniego died after she was struck by a bullet while lying in bed in an Albuquerque trailer park. Two weeks before Samaniego’s death, 13-year-old Amber Archuleta was shot and killed in Questa, a small town about 150 miles north of Albuquerque.
The spate of violence spurred the Democratic governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, to take drastic and controversial action. On Friday, the governor announced the immediate implementation of a 30-day ban on carrying firearms in public spaces or on state property in Albuquerque and the surrounding Bernalillo county, declaring gun violence to be a public health emergency.
