More than a year before he was elected governor, Joe Lombardo told a group of pro-gun voters that over the previous 12 months, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department had encountered just six ghost guns.
“It’s not a big issue,” he said.
But according to an investigation of police records by KUNR and APM Reports, officers had recovered at least 252 of the firearms, which are often sold in kits without serial numbers. At the time, Lombardo was still serving as the department’s sheriff.
Responding to Lombardo’s inaccurate claim, Las Vegas Assemblywoman Sandra Jauregui didn’t mince words.
“He chose the gun lobby over the safety of Nevadans. He chose the gun lobby over Nevada lives,” she said.
Jauregui, a Democrat, has sponsored two ghost gun bans in the legislature. Lawmakers approved both, but the first was overturned in court. Last year, after Lombardo was elected governor, he vetoed the second ban.
But Jauregui said she’s ready to try again.
“My work around gun violence prevention isn’t done, because I know firsthand what it’s like to experience gun violence.”
Jauregui is a survivor of the Route 91 Harvest shooting in October 2017 – the deadliest such attack in modern U.S. history. She said that experience motivates her to pursue gun violence reforms.
Jauregui said she would like to introduce the ghost gun ban before the 2025 session, but the legislative schedule makes that impossible.
Neither Gov. Lombardo nor multiple Republican lawmakers responded to interview requests for this story.
Last year, Democrats needed just one more vote to overturn Lombardo’s ghost gun veto.
Democratic State Senator Melanie Scheible, who cosponsored one of the ghost gun bans, said if her party were to win a supermajority in this year’s election, it would allow them to address gun violence.
“The investigation only reaffirmed for me the need to take action in the next legislative session to prevent more unnecessary gun violence and gun deaths,” she said.
Scheible, who worked as a prosecutor in Las Vegas until 2022, said the risk posed by ghost guns is well understood in her field.
“When I talk to other attorneys about gun cases, there is a common understanding and expectation that when minors are committing acts of violence – or any prohibited acts with a firearm – that firearm is going to be a ghost gun.”
