ABQ Councilors Announce Gun Resolution

Two Albuquerque city councilors announced their support on Thursday for state legislation that would require background checks for more gun buyers.

Councilor Isaac Benton, a Democrat, and Councilor Don Harris, a Republican, said they will introduce a resolution at next week’s council meeting expressing Albuquerque’s support for House Bill 77.

Harris said the bill would help keep guns out of the hands of people prohibited by law from having them, such as convicted felons or the mentally incompetent.

House Bill 77 would require private sellers at gun shows to have background checks done on prospective buyers before they make a sale, as my colleague Deborah Baker reported this morning. Federally licensed firearms dealers at those shows already do background checks.

Benton and Harris said they’re hopeful a bipartisan majority of the Albuquerque City Council will support the resolution.

“Democrats and Republicans are coming together to close a loophole in the law,” Benton said in a written statement.

Harris said that an “active convicted felon and mental illness database is essential to protect the community from unlawful firearm sales.”