Silver State firearms enthusiasts were in dire need to fire off a message to their legislators. April 13 was the last day a legislative committee could forward bills to the Senate and Assembly floor. That day approached as fast as, well, a speeding bullet.
Two important firearms bills desperately needed passage in the Senate in the days leading up to Friday the 13th. They were SB92, which would bring Clark County gun registration laws up-to-date with the rest of Nevada, and SB237, a bill to make out-of-state travel safer for concealed-weapon permit holders.
In the Assembly, anti-confiscation bill AB95 wouldn�t have had any controversy when you consider the shameful confiscation of firearms in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. However, it had not even witnessed a hearing.
But let�s first examine SB92. In 1989, the Nevada Legislature wanted to standardize gun registration laws for all of the state. What they ended up doing was passing a gun registration bill that gave every county, except Clark, a uniform gun registration code.
Two decades later, there is still confusion about the Clark County gun registration code. Even the sheriffs are confused, as each interprets the code differently. For instance, Sheriff Young was concerned mostly with Clark County residents registering their guns within 24 hours of purchase or relocation into the valley.
Sheriff Doug Gillespie, on the other hand, wants visitors to register their guns within 24 hours of crossing the county line, unless they get a pass. Recently Gillespie issued gun-registration exemptions on a weekend with expected high-crime traffic. According to Dolores McNamara with the Silver State Shooting Sport Association, Gillespie turned his back on the law when the NBA All-Star game was in town.
�A [Concealed Carrying Weapon] holder from another county must register their firearm or they will be in violation, and all Clark County residents must register,� McNamara said. �But the sheriff decided to not require the NBA bodyguards to register their handguns and �waived� the security-guard license requirement. The sheriff has no authority to do this.�
McNamara also points out that all firearms at Clark County gun shows and all shooters at resort ranges must register their handguns or be subject to arrest and seizure. Supporters of SB92 are now wondering, �Why is Gillespie willing to ignore a law that he�s so concerned with keeping on the books?� According to bill sponsor Sen.
Bob
Beers, the new sheriff opposes SB92.
�It sounds like Clark County�s new sheriff is strongly opposed,� Beers said. �I support SB92 without amendment.�
The surprise lead sponsor of SB92 should be able to shoot this bill to the Assembly like a cannon ball. That�s because the lead sponsor is Sen. John Lee, a freshman Democrat. Republican senators are jumping onboard quickly to give the new guy a pat on the back.
What makes Lee�s sponsorship even quirkier is his constituency. Lee represents a town nicknamed �the Peoples Republic of North Las Vegas� by gun-rights advocates. NLV has arguably the most restrictive gun laws in the state.
Gun-rights advocates point out that in NLV open carry is illegal, unlike the rest of the state (excluding Boulder City). When driving a car without a CCW in NLV, your gun and ammo must be separated � one part in the passenger compartment, the other in the trunk. Additionally, SB92 will remove these ordinances.
Also of interest: All five of the sponsoring senators are Clark County rebels, representing the county Gillespie believes would be safer without SB92. Gillespie even put together a retaliation bill.
Beers speculates that Gillespie introduced AB21, a proposal to increase the CCW fees, as a bill to bargain away in exchange for concessions on SB92. That plan failed as the bill was shot down decisively by the Judiciary Committee on March 23.
To Beers dismay, Gillespie still got his way. SB92 was passed to the Assembly
with amendments. The bill now caters to Clark County tourism, as visitors will no
longer be required to register their guns when entering Clark County. If
passed, this bill will be a relief for gun show attendees, sport shooters and
NBA body guards. Things basically stay the same for residents.
Lee laid the foundation for SB92 early this year by writing a letter to Gillespie. In it, Lee expresses frustration over the lack of access available from the sheriff�s department and questions the policy of issuing �exemptions� to the 24-hour gun registration rule. Those letters are available for viewing online at firearms enthusiast Mike Lussem�s website,
art1sec11.blogspot.com � a tribute to Article 1, Section 11, of the Nevada Constitution, which reads, �Every citizen has the right to keep and bear arms for security and defense, for lawful hunting and recreational use and for other lawful purposes.�
�It is obvious to me that Sheriff Doug Gillespie and his staff cannot defend handgun registration in Clark County,� Lussem writes. �In the more than 40 years that this ordinance has been on the books, we know of no crime that has been solved by it! No one knows how many handguns are in the registry. We have heard an estimate that the number is well in excess of one million. No one knows how many of those on the registry are still in Clark County as there is no provision to ever purge the registry. It just goes on and on!�
With SB237, State Sens. Lee, Beers and Warren B. Hardy, II have done it again. This bill can initially make a Nevada CCW legal in as many as 15 states (and, hopefully, more in the future). The Nevada Department of Public Safety will determine which states have CCW requirements similar to or stricter than Nevada and grant them reciprocity.
SB237 will also simplify CCW policy. Currently, the law requires shooters to qualify with every gun they plan to carry. This bill fixes that by allowing gun owners to qualify for a gun style, like revolver or pistol.
The usual suspects have come out against this bill, namely the Nevada Sheriffs and Chiefs Association. They fear the bill will leave them out-of-the-loop in selecting which states get on the list. In return, they have proposed an amendment to give them more control over the list.
Steve Robinson, a representative from the office of Gov. Jim
Gibbons, supports this bill.
�The citizens of Nevada are safer because of concealed carry,� Robinson said. �[SB237] is going to help not just our neighboring residents, but help our own.�
A similar bill is in the Assembly. AB268 is a CCW reciprocity bill that would give the Attorney General the task of deciding which states Nevada should pair up with. It would also ease restrictions on which firearm a CCW permit holder can carry.
AB95 is a bill to prohibit the confiscation of firearms by government agents during an emergency. It�s sometimes called the �Katrina Bill� because of the controversial confiscation of firearms in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
Passage of this bill will make it a felony to confiscate weapons from citizens in Nevada should we face a massive dust storm, flood or apocalypse. Assemblywomen Valerie Weber and Francis Allen, with colleague Garn Mabey, sponsored this popular bill.
AB95 is probably the most important gun rights bill in the Assembly this
session, but barely got heard. After delays, the bill was heard right at the wire. A bill must be heard before it can be sent to the Senate or Assembly floor.
Lussem @ art1sec11.blogspot.com is concerned that not enough people are sending
messages to committee members and criticized the Nevada State Rifle and Pistol Association
for not even participating in Nevada's 74th legislative session.
Of course, these bills only touch the surface of an ongoing assault against our 2nd Amendment rights.
Libertarian Vin Suprynowicz made a great point in a Review-Journal column posted on Liberty Watch Day in Las Vegas. He wrote, �[T]he right of individual Americans to keep and bear any arm of military usefulness � free from any government tax, registration or regulation (all of which are clearly �infringements,� as any English-speaker who is not a lawyer or a liberal can easily tell you) � was deemed so important to the survival of all our other freedoms that the Founders allocated to the preservation of this God-given right one entire article of the Bill of Rights, while the freedoms of press, religion, speech, assembly and petition (hardly minor stuff) were crowded together, allocated only one-fifth of an amendment each.�
