Clark County’s Gun Registration System Could Be History

Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, sworn in last month, is on record wanting to scuttle the long-standing handgun registry in Las Vegas. (Photo: LVMP)

Guns dot com suggested by George Jefferson with the following comment: "While it is likely that background checks will pass in Nevada,we still hope for positive change."

Las Vegas area gun owners may soon be able to disregard the county’s 67-year-old blue card program, the only one of its kind in the state, which requires registration of handguns.

Implemented in 1948, when the area was frequented by notorious East Coast mobsters such as Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, Clark County’s mandatory handgun registry survived a 1989 preemption law by being grandfathered, effectively making it the only place in Nevada that requires gun registration. However there is a new sheriff in town and he is ready to pull the plug on the program.

“I believe that it’s a redundant system,” Sheriff Joe Lombardo told media last fall while he was a candidate for his current office.

With Lombardo now in the driver’s seat, the powerful Republican Speaker of the state Assembly, John Hambrick, has filed legislation to run in the relic of Vegas’s bad old days.

Hambrick’s bill, AB 127, would homogenize gun laws in the state, striking language that exempts Clark County’s gun registry. Currently the county, with some exceptions, mandates that all handguns with a barrel less than 12 inches be registered within 72 hours of being purchased by an area resident. Those who move to the county and stay more than 60 days likewise have to obtain a blue card – known as such by its color – from police. Registration involves a cursory background check and is without fees to the gun owner.

A similar effort in 2013 brought opposition from both Henderson Police Department and Las Vegas Metro leaders who felt the registry of some 1.2 million handguns is a valuable investigative tool for law enforcement. Even if the local police agree with the sheriff this time around, there are still other factors at play.

Further, community groups have already gone on record opposing any move to discontinue the registry.

“Is it helping them solve crimes because that was the end goal?” asked Jocelyn Torres with Progress Now Nevada Action prior to AB 127’s introduction. “Is it helping them solve crimes that are happening in our community? I think we would need a little more research, more hard numbers from them showing why they would want to get rid of it.”

Some interesting points:

1. counties, and presumably cities, can be exempted from state law.
2. mass confiscations did not happen in Clark County.
3. the gun registration has helped in solving crimes.

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Gun Re-registration Begins in D.C.

Emily Miller writing for the Washington Times

For the first time in the United States, a citizen who has legally registered a gun will have to submit to a renewal process. The consequences of not knowing about this new law or missing the specific 60-day window are dire.

Starting on Jan. 2, every single D.C. resident who has registered a firearm since 1976 must go to police headquarters to pay a $48 fee and be photographed and fingerprinted.

The Metropolitan Police Department estimates there are at least 30,000 registered gun owners.

If the registrant does not go to the police station within three months after a set time frame, the registration is revoked. That citizen is then in possession of an unregistered firearm, which is a felony that carries a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.

The gun itself is put into a category of weapons that can never be registered, just as though it were a machine gun or a sawed-off shotgun.

The city has not made clear how it will enforce the law, but the police are in possession of all registrants’ home addresses so confiscation and arrests would be simple.

California Registration of Long Guns Goes into Effect

Local news reports

Gun registration had always seemed like the “line in the sand” — a proposal that would so offend the nation’s gun-rights advocates that they would bring out their full political muscle to stop it. Yet a California law mandating government record-keeping for all new long-gun purchases goes into effect on Jan. 1 and few people even seem to know about it.

This year, gun owners were relieved that Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the toughest gun-control measures that came to his desk, including one that would have banned sales of almost all semi-automatic rifles. But back in 2011, after much debate, the governor signed the registration law, AB 809, with a 2014 start date. It’s far broader than any of the bills the governor dealt with in the last session.

Supporters claim it’s not exactly registration, in that the law calls forthe state to retain background-check records of those who purchase guns and does not register specific guns to specific people. Opponents say that’s just semantics. The main element of registration is that the government can track legal gun owners. In this case the department will have a list of every owner and the specific guns each person buys. The state already tracks the purchases of handguns and “assault weapons.”