{"id":35438,"date":"2023-02-28T15:10:23","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T22:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-house-passes-firearm-storage-bill-named-after-middle-school-student\/"},"modified":"2023-02-28T22:10:23","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T22:10:23","slug":"new-mexico-house-passes-firearm-storage-bill-named-after-middle-school-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-house-passes-firearm-storage-bill-named-after-middle-school-student\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico House passes firearm storage bill named after middle school student"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tereshia
Tereshia Brown pays her respects on Aug. 19, 2021. Students, faith leaders and community members gathered to remember Bennie Hargrove, and left balloons and flowers near Washington Middle School in downtown Albuquerque. (Lissa Knudsen\/Source NM)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The New Mexico House of Representatives in February passed a measure meant to prevent gun violence by young people using firearms that adult gun owners didn\u2019t secure.<\/p>\n

House Bill 9 sponsored by Rep. Pamelya Herndon (D-Albuquerque) would make it a misdemeanor to negligently allow a child access to a firearm, and would make it a felony if that negligence resulted in someone dying or suffering great bodily harm.<\/p>\n

The bill would create the Bennie Hargrove Gun Safety Act, named after a 13-year-old boy who was shot and killed in 2021 by another adolescent at Washington Middle School in downtown Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

The grandmother of the 13-year-old accused of shooting Hargrove said he brought his father\u2019s gun to school in a backpack.<\/p>\n

Representatives passed the measure in a 37-32 vote after three hours of debate on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis bill is about saving lives and protecting our children. If the gun used to take Bennie Hargrove\u2019s life was properly secured, he would still be with us today,\u201d Herndon said. \u201cWe can prevent school shootings and other senseless tragedies by holding adults accountable for negligently storing their guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero (D-Albuquerque) said on the House floor the proposal is meant to prevent shootings like the one that took Hargrove\u2019s life. She said Hargrove died doing the most honorable thing that any human being can do: Defending someone else.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe stood up in the defense of another child in that school,\u201d she said. \u201cHe stood up in the hopes that he would be able to prevent violence from occurring. And he was caught, and his life was taken, for standing up. I think it\u2019s time that this House of Representatives \u2013 that this Legislature \u2013 stand up and stand strong in the name of Bennie Hargrove, and that we have the courage to respond to our constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

shot by student who had father\u2019s gun<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-35438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35438"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=35438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}