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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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I predict that this emergency order works as intended: if you look like an upstanding citizen you can CC and no one will care. If you look like a felon, this now gives the police a great pretext to stop you, leading to your likely arrest for other infractions.

That is, unless an unlikely bipartisan coalition tries to force the government hand: upstanding citizens that look like upstanding citizens and defiantly OC because constitution, and upstanding citizens that look like felons and want profiling to stop.

It's New Mexico. It's solid democrat but there's actual hardcore red tribers in much more significant numbers, and much more urban and periurban environments, than in say New York or California, and lots of libertarians running around. Open carry protestors will take over some minor local landmark(maybe a farmer's market or a park) and the cops(at least the locals) will let them. That's just going to happen.

Usually, at least at the prosecutor's level, if not the actual beat officers, this seems to work the opposite way. If you're an upstanding citizen CCing in full compliance with the actual published law, then you get the book thrown at you - full charges, highest bail they can get, max punishment, etc. If you're a career criminal on the way to commit another armed robbery or gang hit, then you get charges dropped lightened to where you can be released immediately.

This law doesn’t prohibit CC though.