Group rallies for background checks for gun sales

A group of gun control advocates on a national bus tour stopped in Las Vegas on Monday to rally for background check legislation.

The group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, launched the tour last month, six months after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. They said their bus will stop in 25 states as it crosses the country.

“Sandy Hook was something that I think touched all of us in the country,” said Nevada State Senator Justin Jones, D-Las Vegas.

Jones was the primary sponsor of background check legislation passed by the state Legislature this year. Though polls show wide support for such a measure, Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed the bill, saying he did not support a provision that required background checks on private sales.

Similar legislation failed in the U.S. Senate earlier this year. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has pledged to bring it back up. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., voted against it. A Heller representative said Monday that his position has not changed.

Heller said at the time that, while he favored background checks in principle, he did not vote for that particular legislation because it “could lead to the creation of a national gun registry and puts additional burdens on law-abiding citizens.”

Supporters say, however, that the proposed law specifies that no such registry can be created, and they say that background checks are no burden. They typically take less than 10 minutes to perform.

The advocates remain undaunted. They said they will try again and again until what they call “common sense” gun control legislation passes. They said their goal is to keep guns away from criminals and the mentally ill, not from law-abiding people.

Steven Barton, for example, didn’t think much about gun control until last summer. He’s a 23-year-old guy from a small town in Connecticut, which is coincidentally just a few minutes outside of Newtown.

When he graduated college last year, he and a buddy wanted to go exploring. They decided to ride their bicycles across the country. Maybe they’d take in Europe the next year.

They stopped in Aurora, Colo, last July, to see a friend. The trio decided to see a movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” the Batman movie that had just recently opened.

A few minutes into the movie, a masked man showed up. He sprayed the crowd with a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun, and later a semiautomatic rifle. A dozen people died, and 70 were injured.

When the shooting started, Barton put his arm up to shield his face. He was peppered with about two dozen shotgun pellets. He put his head down and got out through an emergency exit.

His friends got out, too. One of them was shot, but neither died.

While Barton was recovering from surgery, he said, he began to think about how all of this happened. He was just a guy, learning about his country, loving the experience, when some stranger with a gun barged in and destroyed that peace.

He joined the mayor’s group, and he became an advocate.

“There is common ground to be had,” he said. He does not want to take anyone’s guns away. He realizes background check laws might not have stopped the man who shot him. James Holmes has pleaded not guilty to murder charges. His lawyers have said he is mentally ill.

But Barton said background checks would stop some people. Convicted felons, for example, or someone who has been diagnosed as mentally ill. Those people are free to buy a gun online, or from a private seller, with no trouble at all.

There are already restrictions on gun sales, Barton said. You can’t buy a machine gun, for example. You can’t buy a gun at 7-Eleven with your Big Gulp. Another restriction won’t hurt anyone, he said.

Jones, the senator, called guns a “public health nightmare.” He quoted conservative icon Ronald Reagan, who favored gun control measures, including waiting periods and background checks.

Reagan, like Barton, had been shot by a man purported to be mentally ill.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.