Wade Vandervort
Nevada State Legislature in Carson City, Nevada Wednesday, April 27, 2022.
Friday, April 7, 2023 | 2 a.m.
We don’t need laws — criminals will just ignore them. That’s the argument that Republicans in the Nevada Assembly made Thursday in Carson City. In a statement on Twitter, the Assembly Republican Caucus declared its opposition to a proposed gun control law moving through the Legislature by saying, “A criminal intent on committing violent crimes will not be stopped by this law … This legislation will do nothing to stop the career criminal already intent on breaking the law …”
Read those sentences carefully.
That’s not us putting words in the GOP’s mouth. Those are the carefully considered words of the Republican lawmakers in the Nevada Assembly in a written statement they chose to release on their own Twitter page.
In their own words, they advocate for the idea that laws shouldn’t exist unless criminals volunteer to follow them, effectively handing control of law and order to the whims of violent offenders. This echoes the words of the Republican Party nationally, including Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn.
Last week, Burchett’s district became the latest community to suffer a mass shooting when a gunman opened fire at the private elementary school in suburban Nashville. Three children and three teachers were killed in the carnage. When asked whether the shooting would motivate him to support gun control legislation, Burchett responded “We’re not gonna fix it. … Criminals are going to be criminals.”
This framing of the issue assumes that laws only exist for the purpose of deterrence, but if that is the GOP’s philosophy on gun control, why not eliminate speed limits? After all, “criminals are going to be criminals,” and having a speed limit “will do nothing to stop the career criminal already intent on breaking the law.”
Or what about robbery? Assault? Rape? Murder?
Rape and murder are illegal in all 50 states, yet it hasn’t stopped violent criminals from raping or murdering people. Surely the Assembly Republican Caucus must then believe that laws criminalizing rape and murder have no purpose and should be repealed, just as they oppose reasonable gun control legislation?
Their position is so incredibly asinine that it almost defies belief.
At least until you realize that they have no other reasonable arguments.
Data from the FBI shows that while gun control laws don’t prevent all instances of gun crime, the eight states with the weakest gun control laws have nearly three times as many gun deaths as the eight states with the strongest gun control laws.
Despite decades of National Rifle Association and GOP lies, the states with the highest firearm mortality rates are Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Wyoming. These states all received failing grades from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Moreover, not only is gun control effective at reducing gun violence and gun deaths, but the people of Nevada and the American public writ large overwhelmingly support basic and reasonable gun control measures like those being proposed by Nevada Democrats.
The bill the Nevada Republican caucus is fighting against would prevent people younger than 21 from purchasing certain long guns commonly referred to as assault rifles. People younger than 21 who already own an assault rifle could keep it, they just couldn’t buy more. People younger than 21 could still purchase handguns for self-defense. The only restriction would be on future purchases of specific weapons designed for war and mass murder by people younger than 21.
This is a reasonable bill that recognizes that six of the nine deadliest mass shootings in the United States in the past five years were perpetrated by people who were younger than 21. Five of those six massacres involved an assault rifle that would have been covered by the proposed legislation.
In the same week that Nevada GOP lawmakers falsely linked the increasing trend of violence in schools to restorative justice plans in schools, they are refusing to link the pattern of mass shootings to young people with assault weapons.
Of course, if we consider their possible motives, this might just make sense in a perverse way.
While the state GOP position on gun control appears to encourage anarchy and lawlessness, the national GOP is pursuing a much more dangerous path: authoritarianism. Republican leaders are not against all laws, they are simply against any law that limits their ability to threaten, harass, intimidate and otherwise coerce the rest of society into bending to their worldview.
That would explain why Republican lawmakers across the country, including here in Nevada, have relentlessly opposed prohibitions on firearms at polling places and ballot drop boxes. Intimidation tactics are far less effective without guns.
Conversely, protecting the public from gun violence would require the GOP to admit that the culture of guns in the United States, in particular assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, has contributed to lethal violence in our society. Rather than address real societal problems, Republicans and their media henchmen seek to distract with incoherent blather about drag queens, books about Black and gay people and history, trying to compel private businesses like Disneyworld to agree with them politically and panic about other undefined boogeymen of “woke” ideology.
Meanwhile, Americans die. Including children who are too young to vote for representatives who would help save them.
We defy members of the Assembly Republican Caucus to explain how they can support their statement Thursday that “a criminal intent on committing violent crimes will not be stopped by this law” without simultaneously believing that all criminal laws should be repealed. We challenge any member of the Assembly Republican Caucus to explain how this is not plainly hypocritical manipulation that sacrifices human lives for personal political gain.
We’re not optimistic. We’ve issued these types of challenges before and received nothing in response. Despite the cowardice of their silence, we keep inviting GOP representatives to provide input and explanations. Nevadans deserve meaningful dialogue on keeping our schools and communities safe, not nonsensical rhetoric. More importantly, Nevadans deserve to know why Republican lawmakers continue to prioritize guns over lives.
