Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Laxalt, Sandoval weren’t serving Nevadans by opposing Question 1
If and when Attorney General Adam Laxalt seeks their votes again, Clark County residents should remember how hard he fought against the ballot question to expand background checks on gun purchases.
Laxalt didn’t merely oppose the measure, he appeared in TV commercials aimed at defeating it.
“Question 1 sounds good because we all support background checks ...” he said at the beginning of one of his ads, at which point he should have just shut up.
But Laxalt went on, sounding like someone had jammed a speaker in his mouth and let a National Rifle Association lobbyist speak through it. The law, he contended, was a “sloppy, legal disaster” that “could put honest Nevadans in jail.”
How ridiculous. In reality, the measure contains a number of exceptions that allow sales or transfers of guns between close relatives, at gun ranges or competitions, in cases of emergency or anytime the gun owner is in close proximity to the recipient of the gun. Even card-carrying NRA members said that at most, the initiative would create mild inconveniences for responsible gun owners who wanted to give or sell a weapon to someone.
Clark County voters saw through the Laxalt/NRA propaganda, as shown by the results of the election. The question passed by more than 100,000 votes in Clark County, enough to carry the measure statewide even though it was defeated in the state’s 16 other counties.
Clearly, the vast majority of voters in and around Las Vegas recognized the measure for exactly what it was: a common-sense way to reduce gun violence, not an assault on Second Amendment rights.
The ballot question merely made private sales and transfers subject to the same regulations as transactions involving licensed dealers, which require background checks. In other words, it closed a loophole that allowed buyers to steer around background checks by purchasing from private dealers at gun shows, through the internet and by other means.
What terrible leadership by Laxalt. His job is to enforce the law and protect Nevadans, not carry the water of NRA zealots who would have allowed felons, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill to keep buying guns out of the backs of trucks or at gun shows without a background check.
But while Laxalt was the most visible state leader who was out of line on the issue, he wasn’t the only one.
Gov. Brian Sandoval, citing Second Amendment concerns, vetoed legislation in 2013 that would have closed the loophole. At the time, he was the top recipient of campaign contributions from gun rights groups among state leaders over the previous 23 years.
Sandoval also opposed the ballot measure, though not as vocally as Laxalt.
Their actions give voters every right to ask Sandoval and Laxalt if they were motivated by politics or their duty to help protect Nevadans. And if the answer is the latter, voters have the right to ask why the two sided with sheriffs who said the measure would do nothing to protect Nevadans when existing background checks have blocked thousands of sales of weapons from licensed dealers.
In the vast majority of Nevada — really everywhere except the Las Vegas Valley and in parts of Reno — being seen as a Second Amendment stalwart carries a lot of political weight. This fact also would explain why sheriffs in 16 of 17 Nevada counties also opposed the measure, and Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo stayed neutral on it.
Sandoval and Laxalt also were out of step with Clark County voters on a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana, which passed by nearly as large a margin as the background check initiative here. But at least with the marijuana issue, they could cite legitimate concerns about how it would affect public safety.
On the gun issue, Sandoval and Laxalt have no such justification. Although closing the background check loophole won’t block all illicit purchases, it throws up a hurdle that makes it more difficult for dangerous people to get guns.
The benefit to public safety is obvious, and it’s to their discredit that Sandoval and Laxalt didn’t make it their focus in deciding where to land on the issue.