Tragedy reverberates in a gun-loving state
LAS VEGAS — Guns are as baked into Nevada culture as rattlesnakes, sagebrush and slot machines.
It’s a wide-open, Western place where kids grow up learning to shoot early on and weapons laws are among the most relaxed in the country. Murders happen here, sure, but that hasn’t changed attitudes much when it comes to the right to carry a rifle or pistol anywhere and any way you want.
The question now is whether that may change.
In the wake of Sunday’s mass slaughter of 59 people here at the hands of a man who perched himself in a hotel suite above a country music concert with a high-powered arsenal — and apparently one that was fully legal — many Nevadans are loath to link the bloodshed to a gun-friendly culture.
But others are searching their souls.
And as gun stores throughout the state, particularly in Sin City, do the kind of booming business that always follows mass shootings in America, some doing the buying or window-shopping are wondering if maybe things should tighten up. Even if it’s just a little.
Or, at least, they’re thinking a
little harder about what it means to own a rifle that can spray a crowd with hundreds of rounds a minute.
“I didn’t have a problem with guns until I saw firsthand what they can do,” Ivy Lewis, a Las Vegas resident in her 20s, said Tuesday as she waited for a bus near a cluster of shops that included Wild West Guns. She lives behind the venue on the Las Vegas Strip that was sprayed with bullets Sunday.
“I feel like if you are using guns to hunt, you don’t need more than two,” she said. “I think we need a super change after this. We need to rethink the whole gun issue.”
The introspection extended into the country music world, normally a solid bastion of Second Amendment fervor. Caleb Keeter of the Josh Abbott Band, which was part of the lineup at the targeted festival, tweeted that after having been a solid gun-rights proponent “my entire life,” he had been changed by the rampage: “We need gun control RIGHT. NOW.”
He wasn’t likely, though, to start a stampede of country stars agreeing with him. Another performer at the Route 91 Harvest festival, Big Kenny Alphin of Big and Rich, told USA Today he didn’t see the problem as a lack of gun control, but rather as the presence of “evil.” Most stars stuck to calling for thoughts and prayers for the victims.
The owners of gun stores and shooting ranges throughout Las Vegas went mum Tuesday, closing their doors over and over again on a reporter while saying they wanted to respect the dead and stay out of debates about weapons while emotions were raw. But customers had a somber tone.
For David Xu, 53, that tone was paradoxical — in favor of more weapons restrictions even while he bought one himself.
“In this state, it’s too easy to get a gun,” Xu said as he and his 38-year-old wife, Angie Chen, walked out of the giant Range 702 firearms shooting center with a newly purchased 9mm pistol.
“We like gun control,” Xu said. “But we want to protect our family.”
The couple has lived in Las Vegas for 18 years, moving here after getting married in China. They work as casino card dealers and have two children, ages 3 and 12.
“If there was gun control, then we wouldn’t need a gun,” Chen said. “Everyone has a gun. It’s way too easy to kill people. People can kill other people a different way, but with a gun it’s too easy.”
Nevada’s gun laws are the opposite from California’s in many ways, weighted heavily toward an expansive right to bear arms.
Carrying concealed weapons is easy in Nevada, but prohibited in California without a tough-to-get permit. Buying large-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 bullets? No problem in Nevada; no way in California.
Nevadans last year voted in a rare meaningful gun control law, mandating background checks for all firearms purchases. But the attorney general, an ardent Second Amendment advocate, has refused to implement it, saying he has trouble with the database used for the checks on customers.
The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives Nevada a C-minus for legal gun safety, while California gets an A.
“People go to Vegas to indulge all kinds of activities they might not in their normal lives,” said Laura Cutilletta, the center’s legal director. “There are people who see guns as a novelty and a toy, but unfortunately they’re playing with something that is costing people their lives.”
That’s not how most folks in Nevada see it, said Adam Garcia, who doubles as a political science adjunct professor and the police chief at the University of Nevada in Reno.
“Guns are historical in the roots of Nevada,” he said. “We’re an agricultural, rural state.
“There’s a rich tradition here of hunters and farmers, and a gun is a useful tool,” said Garcia. “You need it for coyotes and other kinds of varmints that attack your dogs and cattle. It’s not just a plaything in an area that needs it — but it can be if you want it to. We just do it responsibly.”
Exhibit A for the concept of guns as playthings could be Battlefield Vegas, a glitzy shooting range near the Las Vegas Strip that allows weapons aficionados to shoot .50-caliber machine guns or crush a car with a replica M1A1 Abrams tank. The tank rental costs $2,500.
“More fire-power than your local armory,” Battlefield Vegas’ advertisements trumpet, alongside pictures of customers dressed like soldiers and manning huge guns. “It’s your new playground.”
That stuff ’s for tourists, though, locals say. More typical is the bunch that shows up at the 702 range. Like Art Hansbrough, 78, who came Tuesday to blow off some practice rounds with his five semiautomatic pistols.
In his black bag, he carried his black leather shooting gloves, eye and ear protection, and hundreds of rounds of loaded magazines.
“Every one of these guns is a legal weapon,” he said, before motioning to the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, where Sunday’s killer arranged his nest of rifles. “Unlike the guns that madman had.”
Authorities, however, said the killer used accessories that are legal in Nevada to turn semiautomatic rifles into what are essentially military-style machine guns.
Hansbrough is a former detective sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department who has lived in Las Vegas for 25 years and knows his guns.
“When someone is intent on making a name for himself, he’s going to do it despite any laws,” he said. “This goes back to the uneducated world of gun critics. This one guy just went bananas and started shooting people.”
Hansbrough said he doesn’t own any long guns like the ones amassed by Sunday’s shooter, but he wouldn’t rule out getting one. For him, gun ownership is more than just a hobby.
“The problem is if a war were to break out, and I was to join in the forces to protect America, I would have to get a long gun, because they are more accurate across long distances and have more killing power,” he said.
“I’m old and pretty much used up,” he said. “But I’d give my life for my country or anybody else.”