The LDS Church recently changed its rules to ban guns in their churches, though only in Utah are all LDS churches automatically off-limits by law. The changes have not made many armed citizens happy. Reactions by Mormon gun owners show division in the church with Salt Lake's new policy.

CJ Grisham of Open Carry Texas, himself a Mormon, took the church to task. Texas' new law allowing concealed carry in churches was cited by the LDS Church as the reason to ban guns. In most states, the new change is only a request with little more weight than wearing a blue shirt to the sacrament meeting.

A Reddit thread on "What Are Your Thoughts About Concealed Carry in Meeting Houses?" Pre-new policy.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) amended language in its Handbook 2: Administering the Church to prohibit firearms in its churches. Leadership states this is because Texas recently amended its concealed carry law to loosen restrictions on firearms in churches after high-profile shootings and the 2017 mass shooting at a Sutherland Springs, Texas, Baptist church.
 
Before​:

The timing of this change is particularly bizarre because Wyoming, which has 67,421 Mormons or 11.64% of the population, changed its laws in 2018 to allow concealed carry in churches with no reaction from the LDS church. Texas has dramatically more members, 357,625, but are only 1.26% of the total population. The only high profile firearm incident at an LDS church was the targeted murder of specific individual in Fallon, Nevada, in 2018.
 
While one might easily see how an openly carried firearm in a church could be distracting or disconcerting, a concealed firearm would not be. Instead, the LDS officials have succumbed to the same irrational logic that guns and rules that countless businesses, schools, and governments rely on. Signs and rules are not magical things that keep bad people from doing bad things. It doesn’t make sense and doesn’t have to.
 
Instead, loyal Mormons who will obey the strictures of the church will be disarmed and left at the mercy of potential madmen. Hope is a poor plan. Of course, law enforcement will be allowed to carry. There are a lot of Mormon cops, so there may be some herd immunity there.
 
However, only in Utah is it actually illegal to carry in LDS churches. New Mexico churches must be posted in order to ban concealed carry.
 
Arizona 
'No guns' signs do not have the force of law. If you carry past a 'no guns' sign on private property, you may be asked to leave or disarm. Failure to comply would be trespassing.
 
Parking lot protection 12-781
A property owner, tenant, public or private employer or business entity cannot make rules or policies that prohibits a person from lawfully transporting or storing a firearm:

• In the person's locked vehicle or in a locked compartment on the person's motorcycle.; and
• The firearm is not visible from the outside of the motor vehicle or motorcycle.

Any policy or rule that is established or maintained or the attempted enforcement  is null and void and does not have legal force or effect.
 
This does not apply if there is alternative parking in a location reasonably proximate to the primary parking area is provided.
 
Colorado 
'No guns' signs do not have the force of law. If you carry past a 'no guns' sign on private property, you may be asked to leave or disarm. Failure to comply would be trespassing.
 
Idaho
 'No guns' signs do not have the force of law. If you carry past a 'no guns' sign on private property, you may be asked to leave or disarm. Failure to comply would be trespassing.
 
 
Montana 
'No guns' signs do not have the force of law. If you carry past a 'no guns' sign on private property, you may be asked to leave or disarm. Failure to comply would be trespassing.
 
 
New Mexico 
There is no separate church law, however, 'no guns' signs on private property have the force of law for concealed carry only (not like anyone will be carrying concealed to church). Concealed handguns are prohibited on private property when 'no guns' signs are posted or by verbally notifying persons upon entering the property, 10.8.2.16F and 10.8.2.27 NMAC. Signs must be posted according to the standards of the trespassing statute (30-14-6).
 
Nevada 
'No guns' signs do not have the force of law. If you carry past a 'no guns' sign on private property, you may be asked to leave or disarm. Failure to comply would be trespassing.
 
Utah 
Churches (and houses of worship) may choose to prohibit firearms (76-10-530). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prohibits firearms on all its property. Per the BCI page listing notices, only the LDS church and one other church legally bans firearms.  
 
Carry in LDS churches and temples is illegal. I would recommend not carrying at all in any LDS owned building. Specifically, it is illegal to transport a firearm into a house of worship or enter or remain a house of worship. The law does not prohibit firearms in vehicles.
 
Washington 
‘No guns’ signs do not have the force of law. Private property owners can choose to prohibit firearms and exclude carriers. Failure to leave or disarm when requested would be simple trespassing.
 
Wyoming 
The “place of worship” section of 6-8-104 was repealed by HB 141 in 2018. Carry is not prohibited by law in churches.
 
‘No guns’ signs do not have the force of law. Private property owners can choose to prohibit firearms and exclude carriers. Failure to leave or disarm when requested would be simple trespassing.

​ 
California legislators are seeking to influence Nevada into passing more strict gun control.
 
They are upset because criminals can buy guns and ammo in Nevada and take it to California. With private sales being banned, part of that is going to be shut down next year, but now they are pushing namely for discriminating against 18-20 year olds by making it illegal for them to buy guns.
 
Nevada is easy prey because it is a purple state. The state government is controlled by Democrats and their accomplices in California see the party as a way to influence our legislators. Arizona is too Republican to manipulate for the next few years. They are exploiting the recent Gilroy shooting to use the emotion to their advantage. Fun fact: California is the largest importer of crime guns into Nevada.
 
One state attempting to influence another in this manner is absolutely despicable. Powerful interests are leaning on legislators to go against the interest of the public for the benefit of tyrants in a foreign state. This would be like Nevada casinos bribing the California legislature and proposing a ballot initiative to outlaw Indian casinos in California.
 
Nevada has a large population of ex-Californians precisely because of this crap. The Democrats have ruined California and are exporting their bullshit to other states. The legislators who proposed this don’t care. They are entirely mortally corrupt and backed by dark money that would welcome tyranny. Their party and (probably) the Bloomberg forces. The hoplophobes will use any advantage to their benefit to enforce tyranny.
 
Nevadans will not comply and will not give up their guns no matter what California or the anti-gunners try to do.  
 
Email your representatives, the lead asshat from California, and the governor. No new gun control, no special legislative session. California needs to mind it’s own damn business.
 
[email protected]; [email protected]
 
Governor
http://gov.nv.gov/ContacttheGovernor.aspx
 
California lead ass-clown
[email protected]

​You’ve just gone through the most intense and frightening experience of your life. You are exhausted from the adrenaline rush that just faded away. Your body aches from the fight. Your ears are ringing from the gun shots and your heart is pounding. The police show up and you want to tell them all about the incredibly terrible thing that just happened to you.
 
While it is natural in the aftermath of a traumatic experience and confronted by the authorities to figuratively spill your guts, this can get you in a lot of trouble. Many of us make no plans or preparations for after a defensive shooting. We figure that it will be relatively unlikely we will have to shoot someone and if we do, we’d “rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.”
 
I’d like you to consider what could go wrong. Maybe you shot at the wrong moment or at the wrong person. Maybe your defensive display of handgun gets called in to 911 as a brandishing and the bag guy’s friends back up his story. What you say is just another piece of the puzzle; not necessarily the gospel truth of what really happened.
 
When police are involved in a shooting, they are asked two things right away: how many shots did you fire and in what direction? After that, they are provided with a lawyer and union representative. Their department reads the officer their Miranda rights and orders them to speak or be fired, thus rendering anything they say inadmissible in court.
 
You don’t get those courtesies. In my time in law enforcement, I’ve seen far too many people open their mouths and talk themselves in to trouble. A lot of them were willing to admit they were wrong and face the music, but in a gray area where your very life could be at stake, you do not want to take chances.
 
These two men over-reacted and one seriously should have shut his mouth. You do not have to speak with the police, but many people want to tell their side of the story. Too many people think they can talk their way out of trouble and instead talk themselves into a pair of handcuffs.
 
Now, if you did do wrong, why wouldn’t you find someone to help you to ensure the best possible outcome? In the road-rage story from Las Vegas linked just above, an attorney would have been invaluable during the interrogation. Remember, the police will ask you questions and elicit responses from you to establish guilt if they suspect you did something wrong.
 
If you screwed up and shot someone when you shouldn’t have, but they were still a threat to you, what you say to the police can make a second degree murder charge when in fact it was only involuntary manslaughter.
 
What if they lie about you? One resident of Las Vegas was accused of pistol whipping a friend during an argument. Despite discrepancies in the victim’s story and the apparent motivation for the attack to be to establish grounds for a “U-visa” (crime victim), the district attorney’s office brought the case forward. The prosecutor was none other than now-Senator Nicole Cannizzaro. The defendant I interviewed accused her of pushing forward the case out of political motivation due to her running for the senate that year.
 
That Las Vegas man spent $70,000 of his savings to pay for attorneys and put his house up for bail collateral after defensively displaying his gun. Though he was acquitted after 20 minutes of deliberation, he is still out that money and has to deal with the damage to his life that the accusation caused.
 
Whether that is the case or not, the time is now here that a purely political prosecution is probable. Do you want to be the next George Zimmerman or one of the horror stories in a Massad Ayoob concealed carry book? Of course not.
 
Can you afford an attorney on your own? The above case of assault with a deadly weapon cost $70,000 and required a top-notch attorney. Do you trust a public defender to get you off? This is why you need concealed carry protection. The US Concealed Carry Association provides legal assistance to keep your money in your wallet for as little as $22 a month.
 
Even if all you ever use from them is the magazine (which is top notch) and the training materials, you have the piece of mind of having $100,000 up to $250,000 for legal defense and $500,000 to $2 million for civil defense. If you are involved in a shooting, you don’t have to scramble to try to find an attorney.


All you have to do is pull your membership card out of your wallet and call the 24/7 hotline for a specialist defense attorney come to your aid. Even if everything is 100% above board with your self-defense incident, an attorney can bring you piece of mind and comfort while the police interview you. Join the USCCA today and get the piece of mind that comes with knowing there is always someone who will have your back. Keep your savings for you and your family; let your membership foot the bill.
 
Just like you hope to never use your gun, but if you do, make sure you have someone on call to represent you and the funds to defend yourself.

​Read this take on resistance to gun confiscation first.
 
I agree that police will not be engaging in gun confiscation; at least not for long. Most street cops will not be participating because that’s not their job and once cops start getting killed during gun raids many will refuse or quit. Despite the legion of anti-gun assholes who don’t know what they’re talking about, cops value their skin more than their paychecks. Many cops won’t put themselves at risk of certain death and more than you know are just as eager to give the finger to gun control, especially in California.
 
Now what cops will participate? Minorities who are first or second generation Americans who have little to no experience with a gun culture. They come from top-down compliance societies where people are expected to obey authorities and guns are generally viewed as “bad.” They will be antagonistic towards Americans because they do not understand our patriotic, individualistic culture that literally celebrates rebellion against tyranny such as this. For Latin Americans and Asians in policing that come from a country where only the police and criminals have guns, seeing the violence and non-compliance will not endear gun owners to them.
 
Your average street cop won’t be knocking on your door for your guns. There will be too many SWAT teams to do it, but surely there will be some hitting high-profile targets. Abused red flag laws will end up with more cops getting shot. Someone will escalate it into killing a cop’s family after a raid goes wrong and an innocent kid is killed. Then snipers at the police station, etc. as the whole damn thing unravels and the rhetoric escalates.
 
I can see specialized task forces of local, state, and federal cops volunteering for gun confiscation duty. They will be pariahs in law enforcement much as the ATF is, but worse. These will be the hard chargers with a mission who will come to your door in tactical gear. They can’t get us all, but expect the tall nails to be hit first. I think the actual scheme and effects will look more like as follows.
 
Mandatory compliance will be required. What you are allowed to keep will be required to be registered.
 
Compliance will be checked by tracing ownership from Form 4473s and if you did not surrender or declare, you better have a good answer for who you sold it to.
 
Those bitter clingers who do not turn in their guns or cannot give a good account of what happened to them will probably get an escalating series of nasty letters.
 
Anyone who gets picked up for non-compliance will be arrested in public at a traffic stop or some environment where it is least hazardous to the arrest team. If you happen to find yourself on a non-compliance list for ignoring all those letters, expect to have a warrant out for your arrest. They’ll pick you up at a traffic stop for something unrelated to guns.
 
Non-compliers will have a target painted on their backs. The vindictive power of the government will likely fall upon you; we’re talking IRS audits, Social Security payments stopping, the VA declaring you incompetent because of 10% PTSD rating, etc. That’s just at the federal level. At the state level, just imagine your driver license being suspended, your kids taken away from you, letters being sent to your employer that you are “known to carry and possess” dangerous weapons.
 
All the while in the background politicians are being assassinated, cop-haters using gun confiscation as an excuse to kill innocent cops, crazies are shooting up Walmarts, political protests turning into something out of The Troubles, and nobody being safe or secure anywhere. Imagine living in a time and place where mass shootings, random killings, racial violence, bombing, government terror, etc. are all commonplace.
 
Even if you have relative peace in your area, where the gun control is popular like California, using a gun even in legitimate self-defense will be problematic. You’ll be lucky if the cops are cool and do the bear minimum of taking your self-defense gun or the ones in the house instead of hauling you in on federal gun charges.
 
Mob of Antifa trying to burn down your house and you whip out that AR pistol with 30 round magazines to drive them off? You save your family but at the price of going to jail on gun charges and having your yard dug up. The government will force you to choose between stopping that robbery or revealing you kept an evil pistol. So bury those 80% guns deep.
 
So to recap, imagine a world of unimaginable violence, like Israel before the switch to rocket attacks, or as author Matt Bracken puts it, “Rwanda times Bosnia.” On top of that, the government already suspects you of owning guns and they will deal with you ever so harshly if they can get you on gun charges. So despite having an arsenal for just this situation, if you use it, you’re going to be pilloried for doing just that. 

​The mainstream media is in a tizzy because the loser from Dayton used an AR pistol in his attack. These weapons are an alternative to paying the $200 short-barreled rifle (SBR) tax and waiting the better part of a year to put a proper stock on a rifle with a barrel less than 16 inches. An arm brace, be it the kind that goes around your arm or just literally braces against it, is legal to attach. Adding a vertical forward grip makes it into an “any other weapon” which requires a tax stamp.
 
The difference between these rifles and legally short-barrel rifles is that the idea is they are fired with just the dominant hand holding the pistol grip and perhaps the buffer tube pressed against the forearm. It is not as stable as a rifle or as accurate due to stability and the inherent loss of accuracy in a short barrel. Stability can be improved with braces which have been used by holding against the shoulder like a rifle, creating a “poor man’s SBR.”
 
Unfortunately, the claim is now being made by the anti-gunners and their complicit tools in mainstream media that these weapons are a “loophole.” We are seeing the bump fire stock playbook opened up once again. People said they though bump fire stocks were stupid and now we’re seeing the fruit of “giving something up.”
 
AR pistols are not a “loophole.” It is a precise definition of federal law of “pistol” that anti-gunners would find “problematic” and the determination, again derived from fact, that a “brace” is not a stock, even if can be used as one. The ATF determined braces, even if shouldered, were not stocks, changed their minds, then changed it back. With bump fire stocks as precedence, we could see political pressure ban AR pistols once again.
 
Such pistol versions of rifles exist because the National Firearms Act of 1934 originally was to apply to pistols, so sawed-off shotguns and cut-down rifles were included to limit the availability of concealable weapons. In the 1930s, America was about two decades past the height of the anti-concealed carry hysteria of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The rhetoric calling for the banning of “pistol toting” died down when the rise of “auto bandits” created the panic, combined with bootlegging crime, lead to the NFA.
 
Pistols were removed from the Act over strong protest from the NRA and the US Revolver Association (many influential persons were active members of both). The latter had written the model Uniform Pistol Act in the 1920s that sought to strictly regulate pistol purchase, acquisition, and carry that was an attempt to forestall total pistol prohibition. The Association was keen on keeping their pistols for matches and many members disapproved of defensive carry—an attitude far more widespread than today. In some states, the remnants of the Pistol Act continue to infringe on rights today.
 
Banning of AR pistols would not be a total confiscatory ban like with bump fire stocks (that saw little compliance from their owners). Using past examples, the ATF would likely require registration along with an amnesty. The pistols would then be NFA items (either “any other weapons” or short-barreled rifles). I don’t see room in the US Code to allow the NRA to create a new class of weapons to be registered, as California did when it created bullet-button “assault weapons” in addition to pre-1989 “assault weapons.”
 
Short-barreled rifles and shotguns are essentially anachronistic regulations, banned because there was no lobbying group to take them out of the Act once their purpose for being in it was removed. One could argue that short-barreled rifles and shotguns are more concealable than full-length variants and more deadly than pistols (accurate, longer-ranged, and more suitable caliber), so regulating them would put revolver armed officers on a more equal footing with criminals.
 
Of course, those arguments are dumb because criminals by definition don’t follow the law. Clyde Barrow stole M1918 BARs from National Guard armories and cut them down. Today, police and civilians both commonly carry weapons of equal parity. Most criminals, as in 1934 and today, use a cheap handgun or less commonly a cheap rifle or shotgun without half of the training that even officers for departments that place a low priority on marksmanship have. The SBR regulation is outdated, obsolete, and utterly pointless except to prosecute those dumb enough to be caught.
 
In a practical sense, people own AR pistols because they want a more powerful weapon than handgun that is also compact. A 24” inch not-legally-a-rifle is a better weapon in a fight than a true pistol. The 5.56mm round has better accuracy, better range, and greater effect on target than a pistol round. A rifle is what you should be fighting with; as the saying goes, a pistol is what you use to fight your way back to the rifle you never should have put down. This is why people like AR pistols, short-barreled rifles, and shotguns as “truck guns.”
 
Carrying a rifle into Walmart in case some bad dude with a rifle carries his gun into the store is not feasible. A gun in a vehicle or even in a bag for contingences when a full-size rifle can’t be carried is a good alternative for major trouble. Should one be caught in a mass shooting or terror attack and need to intervene, an AR pistol is a viable go-to weapon.
 
Sadly, the hype of these mass shooters has limited the practicality of these weapons in personal responses. Whipping out an AR pistol during an incident is likely to get one labeled a second shooter than a good guy. In a few incidents now we’ve seen reports of multiple shooters because citizen carriers draw their weapons.
 
In a defensive gun use that escalates or where one has time to access the AR pistol, or in a rural area where police response may be long in coming, may be much more viable. The shorter length and better handling makes these weapons an ideal weapon for home defense, especially in light of the fact that 5.56mm rounds tend to be less likely to over-penetrate residential walls.
 
In any event, whether or not AR pistols fall into the category of bump fire stocks or face a ban with ARs and semi-autos in general, more scrutiny is guaranteed. I don't see how the Supreme Court could realistically support a ban of these weapons. Short-barreled rifles are in common use by the military (the M4 has a 14.5” barrel and shorter weapons are common police and special forces weapons), so under the Miller ruling, they could not be regulated. Also with the legality of regular handguns the original reasons for regulating SBRs is pointless.

This is why we can't have nice things. Conor Climo, the winner who thought an open carry patrol with a rifle and tactical stuff in his Centennial Hills neighborhood, was arrested Friday by the FBI on terrorism charges. He wanted to apparently shoot up or blow up a synagogue or gay bar and got caught because he was talking about it online. 
 
Not like we didn’t see potential issues with him before this. No one needs a teenager open carrying a rifle patrolling their neighborhood—not even in the whitest trashiest part of Nevada. Because when something like this happens, this blows up. And in the week following the triple mass shooting hype and the dumbass stunt in the Missouri Walmart. To hell with these guys. Chipotle Ninjas make us look bad.
 
People who do open carry stunts like that, probably the super majority of the time, are looking for attention in all the wrong places. I don’t know what this douche canoe’s problem is, but he’s got them. A stint in Club Fed will fix that right up and we’ll never have to worry about him making open carriers look bad again because he will be a felon. These people are not representative of the open carry community. The only time long gun open carry patrol is appropriate in an urban area is in the midst of a major disaster or unrest.
 
I know some of us in our community tried to reach out to him to put him on the right path, but it appears this guy was broken to begin with. He was a kid who start out meaning to do well, but with no positive influences he was lured away into darkness where he found community. The societal values found in churches, schools, and community groups that have traditionally counteracted radicalism are mostly absent today.

Unfortunately, instead of being taught good things like responsibility and patriotism, that lead young men into the military, law enforcement, or being responsible politically involved citizens, the same forces that impel many into good impel others into evil. Influential members of a community on the fringes can sway impressionable minds as we see here. 
 
Climo was drawn to “white nationalism” and corresponding with what he thought were Neo-Nazis. “White nationalism” is the new euphemism for white supremacy, a racist ideology. Many prominent conservatives and independent thinkers are slandered through use of this term for espousing an end to unfettered immigration and recognition that European heritage is no reason for “white guilt.” In the twisted minds of the Left, people like Stefan Molyneux ends up being compared to Hitler. If you are an empty headed kid and someone who validates you fills you with hate, it's easy to fall into one of these poles.
 
Foolish young men filled with rage channel their anger into futile activities like shooting up a Walmart after gorging at a trough of hate served up by keyboard commandos. A constant influx of essentially propaganda can be exhausting and frustrating. Instead of dealing with the internal conflict this provokes in a constructive manner, through non-violent political change, mentally unhinged individuals pick and object of their frustration (gays, Jews, Mexicans) and target them directly.

Climo, I'm told, has cognitive issues, but to what level, we are not fully sure of. Because these young men generally are not very bright, not well read, not positively influenced, and believe everything they hear about the globalist/Jewish/whatever conspiracy, radical forums become an echo chamber for every bad idea. Before the Internet, it was harder to radicalize people because stupid people had to find each other in real-life. Now the Internet has given everyone a voice, a way to find each other, and amplifies their ideas.

For others, they find themselves in place of hate and darkness, and like the titular Shakespearean villain from Richard III: To entertain these fair well-spoken days,/I am determined to prove a villain/And hate the idle pleasures of these days. Or, from Gunfreezone.net: "the cause of mass shooters in the United States, both lone-wolf white men and predominately black gang violence [is they] both largely stem from the same place, a sense of hopelessness. Young men who believe they have no solid future of value, so retreat into ideological extremism or fatalistic recreational violence." That was the case in Las Vegas, Santa Barbara, and Sandy Hook.
 
Yes, a civil war is coming and with it unimaginable violence, but none of us need to hasten it. If you ask Climo why he chose these targets instead of say the actual people responsible for whatever aggrieved him, I’d bet you’d come away with an answer that indicated he picked them because he hated them. He didn’t want to change anything; he just wanted to hurt people he didn’t like. Most of these mass killings have just been expressions of inner hatred. Constant exposure to hate, left or right, on TV or online has been poisoning people and becoming a corrupting influenced unbalanced by any good.
  
Did he have an “unregistered firearm” as some of the clickbait headlines are crowing about? No, the DOJ press release says specifically a “destructive device” as in Molotov cocktail parts (or bomb components).

This is the guy who was detained at gun point by a concealed carrier while the police arrived. He was arrested for his little open carry stunt in a Missouri Walmart. I can guarantee you this was to get him fame and publicity, while calling it, "an exercise of rights" or some such nonsense. Idiots like this want to get famous, even if it means they become infamous. He was likely influenced by the media attention on the shooters and wanted the same kind of attention, without hurting anyone. 

Instead, he made open carriers look bad. Again. We had enough damage done by Open Carry Texas in the first half of this decade. If you think OCT helped get open carry passed, think again. Email me and you can read my unpublished chapter from my open carry book (forthcoming) and see that they didn't have the affect they did. Also, crap like this is going to get our pistol braces bump fire stock banned. 

Open carry is not about showing off. Yes, it is a tool for activism, conversation, and in limited contexts, political speech. Yet is about comfort, ease of draw, and safety. Open carry should remain legal and unhindered because its easier than concealed carry and doesn't require getting prior government permission in most states. Open carry of rifles in urban areas is seldom appropriate.

As Red Forman of That 70's Show said, don't be a dumbass.

This is in response to: James DeHaven’s Aug. 2nd article in the RGJ "Gilroy shooter's age could stir debate over how young is too young to buy a gun in Nevada." Since the original publication, it has been trotted out again in the wake of El Paso and Dayton. It’s not much about age, but about attacking preemption and an “assault weapon” ban. I don’t expect the RGJ will actually publish my editorial reply.
 
This article is irresponsible, biased journalism and nothing more than political propaganda for the gun control lobby. Even the title is disingenuous: “could” stir debate, or, in the author’s opinion, “should” stir debate? Not a single opposing viewpoint was presented; just hyperbole and outrage from political figures. There was no logical examination of facts, only an implied call to action.
 
The article is nothing more than telegraphing the priorities of anti-gun activists funded by out-of-state money. It is a call to ban so-called “assault weapons” (a misnomer) and to allow municipalities to pass whatever gun control they want. The age and “assault weapon” issues have been dealt with exhaustively elsewhere, so I will instead discuss the idea of state firearms preemption.
 
In 1989, Nevada passed the first preemption law that prohibited municipalities from making their own gun regulations, which was strengthened in 2015 to remove grandfathered laws. The intent of these laws is to avoid a confusing patchwork of regulations that would vary among cities and counties. It is a concept designed to prevent emotional legislation by reactionary and unipolar  commissions and councils from creating gun regulations, such as the expressed desire by some Clark County commissioners to enact bans after the October 1, 2017, shootings.
 
Not only is putting gun laws with the state a preventative from a small rudder like seven people steering two million citizens, but is a check against unconstitutional gun laws. Nevada has a history of illogical, emotional, and even offensive gun control. Let’s take a look at some of it:
 
In 1971 the Carson City sheriff opposed a bill allowing women to carry mace because “it might give a woman a false sense of security and cause her to be hurt.” In 1976, Reno police reminded women it was illegal to carry guns in public. Reno banned open carry until the late 1990s despite a host of court decisions across the country affirming that open carry could not be banned (but concealed carry could).
 
North Las Vegas banned open carry and carrying firearms in public; police widely bragged the ordinances were used specifically as an excuse to create reasonable suspicion to detain blacks and Latinos. Repealing state preemption will allow emotional laws based on politics and not facts. It will be an authoritarian’s dream, although the Legislature is not looking much better at this point.
 
In conclusion, the alternative will be thrown out that I should just move to a county with less gun control. I moved from a state with high gun control and now those politics followed me. It’s time to draw a line in the sand. If the half of the state that agrees with me cannot effect political change, can we at least have objective and honest newspapers instead of propaganda?

Did the NRA just call for more gun control?
 
No, at least not with this statement. That doesn’t excuse the flaming dumpster fire they’ve become, their support for “red flag” gun confiscation, or the bump fire stock debacle though.
 
What they did was simply reiterate federal law. Notice the word “adjudicated” which comes straight from 18 USC 922: anyone who “has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution” cannot buy or own firearms. They added that the mentally ill should be admitted to treatment.
 
The 2012 Aurora, Colorado (Batman), Parkland, and Sandy Hook killers were ones that should have been institutionalized for treatment. Instead, they were allowed out among us with basically no one doing a darn thing. Mental health has been completely ignored in this country for a long time. Deinstitutionalizing the mental health system has flooded the streets with unhealthy people and society has generally ignored them. Ask any cop; the mentally ill are dealt with on a daily basis and are a huge problem.
 
The mentally ill do need treatment. We need institutions that can house and treat people. Some will never get well and need to be under constant supervision and treatment for their own good. If we put dogs in plastic cones so they don’t gnaw at their wounds, why can’t we give medication and therapy in a setting where the mentally ill can’t get out of taking care of themselves?
 
You’re not doing people a favor by letting them out of mental hospitals. I understand that mental hospitals were hellholes, but that’s changed. We’re not freeing people from a Dickensian nightmare, we’re tossing sick people out on the street. Not institutionalizing people and leaving them to fend for themselves is cruel. These people are tormented by their illnesses, self-medicate with alcohol and drugs, engage in negative behavior, and are lucky if they get arrested to get some kind of treatment.
 
But all of this is moot. Politicians want to “do something” and will legislate because that’s all they can do. Trump isn’t going to save us. It’ll get worse until the real shooting starts, but until then, let’s speak the truth and fight the good fight.
 
I’d like to link to this post from Clayton Cramer, the best firearm legal/cultural historian of our time, where he shows some of his current research into mass murder. It’s about mental illness, not the gun.
 
All that being said; keep your eye on the NRA, your elected representatives, and stop donating to the NRA until they clean house and toss out Wayne LaPierre and his ilk.