Nevada’s Senate Backdoors the Second Amendment

After amending the first 12 pages of the 34 page AB291 and posting it to the state’s website less than an hour before a supposed public hearing, the Nevada Senate voted in favor of a firearms preemption bill that allows different jurisdictions to have different laws and also creates a Red Flag law. First off, the addition is in violation of the Nevada Constitution that says bills must be of a single subject nature.

The addition to AB291 also takes away a person’s lawful right to bear arms without due process, leaving them unable to defend themselves in court and allows a court to authorize law enforcement to seize a firearm if the person doesn’t surrender it by letting police or family members seek an order requiring a person to surrender any firearms if they ‘appear to pose a danger’ to themselves or others. This legislation also bans bump stocks at the state level, lowers the legal blood alcohol level to carry a firearm outside a home, and creates a criminal penalty for those who negligently store a firearm where a child could access it.

Recently, former New York Governor Michael Bloomberg has flooded the Nevada Legislature with funding and lobbyists, actively pressuring the Senate Judiciary Committee to add the “red flag” law. Bloomberg donated $12,400,000 between October 2014 and October 2016 to ‘Everytown for Gun Safety’ and ‘Nevadans for Background Checks,’ the main proponents behind Question 1 from the 2016 Election – the Nevada Background Checks for Gun Purchase Initiative.

During the 2016 Election Cycle, ‘Everytown for Gun Safety’ donated $750,000 to the Nevada State Democrat Party and another $13,850,000 going to ‘Nevadans for Background Checks.’ Furthermore, filings show that ‘Everytown for Gun Safety’ donated an additional $3.1 million to Democrat campaigns and its related PACs during Nevada’s 2018 election cycle.

The combined money raised by the 63 members of the Nevada Assembly was $11.7 million for the entire 2017-2018 election cycle and $10.8 million for the 2015-2016 election cycle, a four-year total of $22.5 million. These two groups spent a total of $21.8 million in the four-year period from 2014 to 2018 – nearly the same amount as was donated to all 63 of Nevada’s legislators during the last four years.

In summation: AB291 and its “Red flag” law is a danger to civil liberties in that due process is automatically waived and gun owners are guilty until proven innocent, allowing the police and judges to confiscate firearms without due process and without the ‘accused’ even being aware of it until the police execute a warrant and demand them. Sadly, there has been no public hearings on any “red flag” laws in Nevada.