SANTA FE, N.M. (KRQE) – On Tuesday, January 30, a committee of lawmakers moved forward with a bill to create a state office dedicated to gun violence prevention. The idea still has a long way to go before turning into official law, but the move represents a step that has been years in the making.
“We started this fight a couple of years ago,” Dayan Hochman-Vigil (D-Abq.) told lawmakers in the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee. Hochman-Vigil and two other Democratic Lawmakers from Albuquerque are sponsoring the bill
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Under House Bill 144 , the governor would select the leader of a new Office of Gun Violence Prevention. That office would be part of the state’s health department. The office would be in charge of collecting and analyzing data on gun violence and would use those analyses to make policy recommendations.
The New Mexico Department of Health already collects some data on gun violence. “But there’s a lot of data that we don’t know because we don’t have the capacity to collect it,” Cabinet Secretary Patrick Allen told lawmakers. “In particular, we don’t have really good data that helps us understand what works and what doesn’t work in terms of trying to prevent gun violence.”