A Los Lunas boy was accused in November of threatening to kill a fellow student at school with a loaded handgun he found at home.
He was 10 at the time.
The boy later told Valencia County sheriff’s deputies he had stolen the gun from his grandmother, Joyce Starchman. She initially told deputies she stored the weapon in a locked box; however, court records allege, she actually kept it in her dresser.
The boy tearfully told deputies kids at school were mean to him, he thought the threat was “cool” and he was “trying to fit in.”
Starchman was charged under a 3-year-old New Mexico law making it a crime to negligently store guns where a child could easily get their hands on them. Police statewide have used the Bennie Hargrove Gun Safety Act in 35 cases since it passed in 2023, according to data provided by the state Administrative Office of the Courts.
In those incidents, at least four children and teenagers have been shot and killed, while another four children shot and wounded themselves with unsecured guns, according to an analysis of the data by The New Mexican.
However, advocates say the word is getting out to irresponsible gun owners to lock up their weapons.
“I do think that people are being more accountable with respect to the firearms that are in their homes, and that’s what I want to see more of,” said Rep. Pamelya Herndon, D-Albuquerque, a sponsor of the bill.
‘More prevention’
Known as Bennie’s Law, the gun safety statute is named after a boy who was shot and killed at Washington Middle School in Albuquerque by a peer who had taken his father’s gun to school. The law makes it a misdemeanor to negligently allow a child to access guns and a fourth-degree felony if the child wounds or kills someone with an unsecured weapon.
The true totals of people who died or children who suffered self-inflicted gunshot wounds since the law was enacted was unclear — court records in at least three of the cases were sealed because they were filed in juvenile court or for other reasons.
In some cases, like that of Starchman, children who got their hands on firearms were stopped before they could hurt themselves or others.
An attorney for Starchman did not respond to a request for comment on the case.
But court records also reveal several tragic incidents in which children who found or took unsecured guns were not stopped in time. Victims included a 10-year-old girl who was shot and killed in Roswell in 2023 while her brother and his friend played with a gun they had found in her father’s bedroom and a 2-year-old Albuquerque boy who shot and killed himself in 2025 with his mother’s gun while she was upstairs.
Still, law enforcement officials said the new crime has been an effective tool to hold parents and other adults accountable.
“The Bennie Hargrove law is a tool for law enforcement to help address the problem of unsafe storage of firearms so kids can’t easily access guns,” Albuquerque police spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos wrote in an email. “Like many new laws, we need to educate the public as well as the criminal justice system to ensure the laws are used effectively and fairly.”
Miranda Viscoli, executive director of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, argued the bill has been successful because its main focus is to prevent youth gun violence and accidental shootings by convincing firearm owners to lock up their weapons.
New Mexican file photo
That strategy has been working, Viscoli said, noting she has begun to hear more and more from young students in gun violence prevention classes who say their parents have begun to lock up firearms because of the new crime.
“It’s just like red lights. People are still going to run red lights, and somebody’s going to get killed, but the red lights prevent that vehicular homicide,” she said. “There’s no law in the world that we can pass when it comes to guns that’s going to make it 100% preventable — it’s impossible. But the more laws we have on the books, the more prevention we get.”
‘A mechanism’
In at least 16 cases, the charge of negligently making a firearm accessible to a minor was dismissed, often as part of plea deals with prosecutors — meaning those people did not face sentences specifically for allowing children to have access to weapons.
While Roswell police Chief Alberto Aldana said Bennie’s Law allows officers to finally hold parents accountable for unsecured firearms, he said the law could use more teeth, as it only allows parents to be charged with a felony in specific circumstances. Aldana’s jurisdiction is the seat of Chaves County, where law enforcement officials have used the new crime more than anywhere else except for much more populous Bernalillo County, according to the state court system’s data.
“This helps us take a little step further, as far as going after the parents on what they allow their children to do,” Aldana said. “There’s finally a law. The only bad thing is, it’s only a felony if it’s a great bodily harm.”
Herndon said her goal for the bill was not necessarily to lock people up but to discourage irresponsible gun ownership.
She noted, as part of her emphasis on prevention versus punishment, she also worked to secure roughly $2 million over several years for mental wellness rooms in schools to provide support services for children at risk of violence.
Matt Dahlseid/New Mexican file photo
“What we needed to do is to have a place where our youth could go and talk about how they’re feeling and talk about what is going on with them before they cause harm to themselves and others,” Herndon said. “The purpose of the legislation wasn’t really to put … family members in jail because they left a firearm out, but it was to make them more cognizant of the fact that there was a penalty if you did leave it out.”
Interim Santa Fe police Chief Ben Valdez said law enforcement officials, advocates and others must keep up efforts to educate children and their parents on how to be safe around guns. He cited as examples hunter safety courses and other programs administered by the National Rifle Association teaching children not to touch and to avoid unattended guns.
Bennie’s Law, he said, is a tool for police when other preventative efforts fail.
“Some people will do what they’re going to do, despite all that education, and for those people, we need to have a mechanism to hold them accountable,” Valdez said.
