New reporting reveals that MAGA extremist Sam Brown has consistently opposed any sort of common sense gun safety reform, including measures to stop the proliferation of ghost guns, limit the sale of gun magazines, and enact red-flag laws – putting him squarely out of step with Nevadans.
Brown said he’d be unwilling to consider a “so-called” middle ground on gun safety just two days after the racially-motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, that killed ten people. Brown received an “A” rating from the gun lobby and ran to the right of Adam Laxalt on opposing red flag laws to keep guns out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others.
Brown’s history of anti-gun safety comments makes it clear that he would have voted against the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act if he had been in the Senate, which 15 Republican Senators voted for.
Read more about Sam Brown’s extreme opposition to any form of common sense gun safety here:
Nevadan News: Sam Brown opposes many gun safety reforms. How will that reshape the 2024 US Senate race?
Casey Harrison
June 3, 2024
- Sam Brown has been on record saying he opposes many gun safety measures supported by Nevada voters, and that the Second Amendment ‘shall not be infringed.’
- Months later, two days after a racially-motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, left ten dead, Brown told a conservative Las Vegas radio station when asked what could be done to prevent future mass shootings that, if elected, he’d be unwilling to consider a “so-called” middle ground.
- Brown’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Nevadan to discuss his stance on gun legislation. And while Brown, who moved to Reno from Texas in 2018, has not yet listed any endorsements from pro-gun groups this cycle, he held an event at a Pahrump armory in April, and was given an “A” rating from the Nevada Firearms PAC last cycle, as well as a 92% rating from the National Rifle Association, according to the nonpartisan candidate tracker Vote Smart.
- Brown ultimately finished second in the 2022 GOP primary to former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt (who would go on to lose to Cortez Masto by about 8,000 votes). But throughout that cycle, Brown routinely criticized Laxalt’s role in the passage of a 2019 “red flag” law establishing court petitions for an extreme-risk protective order as a way to temporarily confiscate a person’s firearms if they are believed to pose a danger to themselves or others.
- Nevada’s red flag law that was among a series of reforms passed by state lawmakers in response to the Oct. 1, 2017, shooting at a Las Vegas country music festival that killed 60 people and remains the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.
- In that forum with the Nevada Firearms PAC, Brown also said he opposed legislation that would have banned the sale and manufacturing of gun magazines that could hold more than 10 rounds. [Brown] also told the group he took no issue with handgun build kits (i.e. “ghost guns”) such as those sold by Nevada-based Polymer80, which the state has moved to ban and opponents say allow individuals barred from purchasing traditional guns to build an unserialized weapon and circumvent necessary background checks.
- “The majority of Nevadans want to see common-sense action to keep children and families safe from gun violence,” said Gladis Merino, political director of GIFFORDS, an advocacy and research group that focuses on promoting gun safety reforms.
- Merino said Brown’s public comments leave gun safety advocates like her to believe Brown would have been among the Republican holdouts to the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which expanded background checks and provided funding for mental health services and state implementation of red flag laws like Nevada’s. Fifteen GOP Senators crossed party lines to help pass the bill, which Biden said represents the most substantive federal gun safety legislation in decades.
- “I think he is out of step with the many moderate GOP and non-partisan voters who want to see action on reducing gun violence,” said Merino.
- Rosen was a vocal proponent in passing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act signed by Biden in 2022 and has cosponsored a number of gun safety bills since first being elected to the Senate in 2019.
- Last year, Rosen cosponsored a bill that would expand background checks to all commercial and private gun sales, and, in the aftermath of the Oct. 1 shooting, has pushed to ban accessories used by the gunman, such as high-capacity magazines and firearm attachments called bump stocks, which can harness a weapon’s recoil and allows a semi-automatic rifle to fire multiple rounds with the single pull of a trigger.
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