Massacre highlights wide gaps in gun laws
States’ regulations range from lax to very restrictive
Apparently, it was all legal. Though an investigation continues, it appears that everything Stephen Paddock did last Sunday night, before breaking the windows in his 32nd-floor hotel room and pouring gunfire onto a crowd at a Las Vegas country music festival, complied with state and federal gun laws.
No law prohibited Paddock from buying the 23 firearms, including semiautomatic rifles, that were found in his room after the slaughter. And although federal law has forbidden the sale of machine guns since 1986, except for a limited number of high-priced weapons made and registered before then, neither U.S. nor Nevada law bans the modestly priced kits that Paddock apparently used to convert 12 of his weapons to automatic rifles that could fire hundreds of rounds per minute.
The worst civilian mass shooting in modern U.S. history has revived the long-running debate about gun control, public safety and the rights of gun owners. The carnage at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 and a night-
club in Orlando in 2016 prompted much talk but no action, at least at the federal level; this time, some congressional Republicans have expressed support for banning “bump stocks,” the semiautomatic weapons conversion kits.
The events of last Sunday have also illuminated the gaping divide in gun regulations among states and the federal government.
Nevada fits the definition of a “purple” state — a Republican governor, a Democratic Legislature, U.S. senators from each party, and an electorate that voted narrowly for Hillary Clinton last year — but its gun laws are among the nation’s most lenient, reflecting regional attitudes and the influence of firearms groups.
Anyone in the state who passes a federal background check can buy an unlimited number of handguns or long guns and, after meeting minimal permit requirements, can carry guns openly in public. Semiautomatic weapons are legal, as are federally registered machine guns and converter kits.
Nevada, like the federal government, requires background checks only for purchases from licensed gun dealers. The state’s voters narrowly approved an initiative last November to extend the checks to private sales and gun shows, but Nevada’s Republican attorney general, Adam Laxalt, declared the law unenforceable after a dispute over whether the FBI or a state agency would conduct the reviews.
Neighboring California, by contrast, has perhaps the strictest gun regulations of any state.
State law bans semiautomatic rifles and converter kits. Federally licensed machine guns are technically legal in California, but permits are generally available only to members of the military, police and film studios. State law prohibits the sale of gun magazines that hold more than 10 cartridges, and a new law, passed by voters, would bar their possession as well, but is currently blocked by a federal judge.
California also requires background checks, and a 10-day waiting period, for all purchasers of firearms, and will require them for buyers of ammunition starting in 2019.
To some extent, states like California “can fill the gap,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who studies gun regulation. But with the stark differences among states, he said, “laws will be less effective than they otherwise might be. If you can buy one of these bump stocks in Nevada and transport them across the state border, a determined shooter will be able to get their hands on them.”
Another obstacle, Winkler said, is the shortage of research on gun violence — due largely to federal budget amendments, backed by gun groups since 1996, that have halted firearms studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Federal data are available for deaths caused by firearms, however, and they show that after California began tightening its gun laws in 1993, following the murders of eight people at a San Francisco law office, gun-related deaths fell by 56.6 percent in the state over the next 20 years, more than twice the rate of decline in the rest of the nation.
Another study, released in June by researchers led by Stanford law Professor John Donohue, found that overall violent crime rose 13 to 15 percent more over a 10-year period in 33 states that allow their residents to carry concealed handguns, with few or no restrictions, compared with states like California that allow local law enforcement offices to deny requests for handgun permits.
Using data through 2014, Donohue found no evidence to support a 1997 study by two University of Chicago researchers that concluded “right-to-carry” laws reduced violent crime.
Research has been less conclusive on the impact of a federal ban on semiautomatic weapons, which was sponsored by Sen. Dianne Fein-