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| Attorney General Adam Laxalt |
As you will recall, the attorney general determined that Question 1 could not be implemented because it required the private sale background checks to be run through the federal NICS system, which is run by the FBI. The FBI told Nevada via the attorney general that since Nevada, by legislation, chose to establish its own Point-of-Sale (POS) contact center in-state for gun background checks, that the FBI is not responsible for running Nevada's Question 1 mandated sales. Some states do split long gun and handgun background checks along state and Federal lines, but none split private and retail sales that way. In short, the FBI will not run the background checks as they are not being paid for it and a Nevada voter initiative cannot force the federal government to do anything.
The FBI refused to be part of Question 1; Laxalt only asked the question and thus the anti-gunner's blame. The anti-gun attorneys, more than likely closely affiliated with the Bloomberg anti-gun groups that have been pushing this law, state by state, made a serious error. They failed to check with the FBI before crafting the text of the law to confirm the FBI would participate. The alleged reason the federal system was chosen was because it is free; supporters feared that the initiative would be defeated if gun buyers had to pay for their own background checks, which is crap because dealers do and the initiative allowed them to charge a transfer fee for having to do the paperwork and make the phone call. Those screaming for a "fix" are the ones that screwed up.
All Laxalt did was uphold the time-honored principle that if one cannot comply with a law or find an alternative to exercise a right, the law is unenforceable. What the frankly stupid crafters of this law did was create a Catch-22; citizens can't buy or sell privately without background checks, but they can't get private background checks in compliance with state law. Laxalt pointed out that well-established case law said "You can't do that." If his opinion was incorrect; why haven't the Bloombergites sued to have it implemented? The reason is, Laxalt was entirely correct and the anti-gunners were wrong. Case law is on our side.
Returning to the blame game, leftists and the anti-gun machine is trying to blame Attorney General Laxalt because he is a strong conservative candidate for governor. Since the anti-gun and Democrat election machines are all part of the same game, opponents of Laxalt want to try to hang the anti-gunnner's failure around the neck of the wrong man. Since Bloomberg Inc. can't admit they made a huge mistake and wasted upwards of $20 million dollars, they are trying to leverage their failure into sinking a Republican candidate. The anti-gun and leftist groups are trying to blame the victim.
The Sun's editorial exhorts Laxalt or "someone" with power to force the alleged mandate through. "Leave no stone unturned. Pursue all viable options. Figure. It. Out." In other words, they want the legal and legislative processes ignored to fix their mistake. Break the law to enforce the law. Madness. What they would like someone to do is to force all private sales to go through the state system in violation of what Question 1 explicitly requires or force all private sales to stop.
Democrats do have the power to implement the fix, but they refuse. Question 1 came up because Governor Sandoval vetoed the legislature's private gun sale ban in 2013. A ballot initiative is hard to overcome--it's set in stone for three years. If the Democrats were serious about fixing it, they would have proposed a legislative fix. They could require Nevada to switch to the FBI system entirely or pass an enforceable duplicate version of the law changing the requirement from the federal to the state system. But Democrats and anti-gunners know they are on thin ice. Sandoval would certainly veto such a bill as he did before. Democrats barely hold a majority and cannot override a veto without senators crossing party lines.
On top of that, they know, despite their lies, that Question 1 passed with a slim margin of support, only about 9,000 more "yes" votes and only succeeding in Clark County. In every other county, Question 1 failed. Looking demographically at the state, where Clark County is an urban area filled with Californian expats and minorities that lean Democrat, it is not surprising that these folks who are unfamiliar with gun laws could be swayed by a massive campaign of lies and misinformation. $20 million bought something far less than a mandate.
This is like Republicans saying that the Anti-Minority Initiative should be implemented, the 14th Amendment be damned, because 50.45% of Nevadan's voted yes to disenfranchise certain races, then blaming the attorney general for daring to uphold established legal principles. With less than 1% of the vote, Question 1 was hardly a mandate. You don't shove something down the public's throat that half the voters opposed.
It's time to listen to the 548,732 disenfranchised voters and ignore the anti-gunners who are making this an issue to torpedo Laxalt's upcoming campaign. If Democrats win the governorship in 2018, Nevada will be lost and begin its transformation into California East. No one will be left to stop the bevy of unsupported, anti-gun laws that will be crafted without abandon. If Nevada is to remain the state we've known, the only option is to vote for Laxalt and Republicans.
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