After Joe Lombardo was caught red-handed lying while on the campaign trail in an attempt to court the gun lobby, he doubled down in an interview with The Nevada Independent on his veto of AB354, which would have cracked down on ghost guns. Lombardo grossly undercounted the number of ghost guns confiscated while he was Clark County Sheriff when he said only six ghost guns had been confiscated when in reality it was hundreds. Despite Lombardo’s attempt to make up a fake justification for his dangerous veto, Nevada’s ghost gun ban would have been similar to laws in California and Oregon, which have not been challenged.
Read more about Lombardo’s lie below:
KUNR: Lombardo defends veto of ghost gun ban
By Bert Johnson
- Gov. Joe Lombardo uses lower court ruling to justify his veto of an untraceable firearms ban. During a live event on March 6, Gov. Joe Lombardo defended his veto of a ghost gun ban passed by the legislature last year.
- It’s the first time he’s spoken about his veto since an investigation by KUNR and APM Reports found he downplayed the number of the untraceable weapons recovered by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which he used to lead as sheriff.
- Lombardo claimed his decision to strike down the ban was justified by a preliminary injunction granted by a federal judge in Delaware.
- But Nevada’s ghost gun ban would have been similar to laws in California and Oregon, which have not been challenged.
- Ghost guns are partially-complete firearms, often sold online without background checks. In recent years, they’ve increasingly appeared at crime scenes.
- In 2021, while Lombardo was still sheriff, he said officers had seized just six of the weapons in the preceding year. But according to public records from his own department, the department had actually impounded 252 ghost guns in that time.
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