Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Elections have consequences: Nevada Dems move gun background check bill

They aim to have the measure covering private gun sales signed by the one year anniversary of the Parkland High School mass shooting on February 14. Steve Sisolak, the new governor our Reno campaign helped elect, has promised to approve the legislation, commenting:

... in the long run I firmly believe it’s going to save lives.”

Nevada Democrats have been working for this for a long time. They passed a similar bill closing the gun show sales loop hole in their state in 2013; the Republican governor vetoed it. So they went the initiative route, passing a background check measure in 2016 when they also carried the state for Hillary Clinton. But their victory was extremely narrow, 10,000 votes or .9 percent of the the total. They carried only Clark County (Las Vegas). The measure was never implemented because of disputes over what branch of law enforcement would conduct the checks and the hostility Republican office holders. So today's victory for a small measure of gun control has been a long time coming.
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Here in California where we have more gun control than anywhere else in the country, and look to win more in the current Dem legislature, it's worth remembering that this took a while and strange twists and turns facilitated it. In my memory, protesters could carry visible firearms into the state capital. (Unmentioned in the video, a failed attempt to recall Diane Feinstein when she was mayor of San Francisco in protest of our gun laws launched the now-seemingly perpetual Senator in our political universe.) Well worth a look.

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