The fight for gun rights in the 2025 session was mainly a defensive battle this session, given that Democrats are one vote short of super-majorities in both the Assembly and Senate. While not all Democrats are anti-Second Amendment, that’s the way to bet. Democratic members presented all the anti-2A bills of the 2025 legislative session. Only one bill was considered that would have benefited gun rights, and it was a banking bill presented by a Democrat.
The main bills involving firearms this session were:
- AB 105 No Guns at Polling Places – NVFAC Opposed; Bill passed.
This bill was amended to allow for innocent shopping in commercial establishments also used as temporary polling places, which provides some relief. The basic problem with the bill from a 2A stand-point is that the only people obeying gun-free signs are the ones unwilling to break the law. Think of gun-free zones as hunting preserves for psychopathic killers.
- AB 245 No Semi-auto Shotguns or Center-fire Rifles for Under 21 – NVFAC Opposed; Bill passed.
We already have federal court decisions invalidating laws like this in other states. It will take a SCOTUS decision to really settle it one way or the other. Meanwhile, Nevada citizens old enough to bear arms for their country will be denied their constitutional right to bear the most popular rifle in the country, the AR-15, and popular hunting rifles.
- AB 451 Immunity for FFLs Voluntarily storing Private Firearms. NVFAC Neutral; Bill Passed.
This bill was well-intentioned as an opportunity for gun owners to voluntarily store guns if they were feeling suicidal. It gives immunity to FFLs who enter into a totally voluntary, negotiated agreement for the FFL to store firearms for at least 1 day at the gun owner’s request. Since it is totally voluntary, there are no enforcement mechanisms, and no penalties associated with it. The bill came down to a vote giving qualified immunity for FFLs who enter into voluntary storage agreements and release a gun to someone who later does harm with it. NVFAC was Neutral on the bill, and it passed.
This bill was co-sponsored by Assemblywoman Sandra Jauregui and Assemblyman P. K. O’Neill. We commend both legislators for forging an agreement that produced something potentially good for both sides of the political aisle, and Nevada’s gunowners and FFLs.
- SB 156 Appointing a Special Counsel for the Prevention of Gun Violence within the AG’s Office – NVFAC Opposed; Bill passed.
Government-run offices like this tend to mostly publish biased and academically poor anti-2A studies. Given the make-up of the Nevada legislature and the sponsor and home of this office, we fear it will do the same. Add in the fact that the current NV Attorney General has already shown himself to be anti-2A, and that he has already announced his candidacy for Governor in 2026, and you have a strong recipe for more biased, academically-poor, anti-gun research to be used as electoral ammunition. Since the office is allowed to accept private donations, we expect to see lots of money coming into it from anti-2A organizations, which we suspect is part of the inspiration for the bill. We think governments should stay out of both anti-gun rights and pro- gun rights propaganda. Unbiased scholarly research in pursuit of the truth is one thing. Non-scholarly and biased anti-gun research as electoral ammunition is another, and likely to be the product of this new office.
The two bills we were most concerned about, and that posed the greatest threat to your constitutional right to keep and bear arms, were SB 89, and SB 349.
- SB 89 Lose firearms rights for Hate Crime in the Past 10 Years –NVFAC Opposed: Bill passed.
This bill we opposed for several reasons. We think it violates First Amendment free speech protections as well as the Second Amendment. Fee speech means what it says, free speech, and the only exceptions U. S. courts have carved out are for obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and commercial speech such as advertising.
Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort, and also a category which is not protected as free speech.
While SCOTUS allowed hate speech to be a sentence enhancement in a 1993 decision (Wisconsin v. Mitchell), which is how so-called “hate crimes” have survived so far, we think they got that one wrong, and look forward to a fresh look from a future (or maybe the current) Supreme Court that will shine the light of liberty on it. We also object to the ten-year look-back element, which embraces a “hate crime” anywhere in the country within the past ten years as being subject to the 2A-disqualification. Last but not least, we think “hate speech” is poorly defined and unconstitutionally vague. It can be almost anything, from a single word to accidentally bumping someone, or spilling their drink in a bar. A constitutional right should not be forfeit for such a “crime.” We regard SB 89 as just another excuse people who don’t like guns come up with to take guns and the right to own them away from law-abiding people.
- SB 347 Confiscating Guns from Owners on Mental Health Holds – NVFAC Opposed; Bill Passed.
This is the other bill we found most egregiously against the clear meaning and intent of the Second Amendment.
SB 347 expands on government powers to confiscate guns from Nevada gun owners without due process. NVFAC has serious due process concerns with this bill. But first, some background on why we find it so egregious.
What is this thing called “due process?” Most people don’t know. Wikipedia defines it thus: “Due process refers to the legal requirement that the state must respect all legal rights owed to a person, ensuring fair treatment through the judicial system. It is enshrined in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, protecting individuals from arbitrary government actions that could deprive them of life, liberty, or property.”
SB 347 rests on Nevada’s Red Flag law, which allows for ex parte hearings for gun confiscations in alleged “mental health crisis” cases. Ex parte means of part, or one-sided. In a case involving loss of a constitutional right, under both Nevada’s red flag law and SB 347, someone can lose their gun rights from a court hearing where they are not even present, and find out that their guns are being confiscated only when armed police knock on their door and demand their firearms at gun point.
Gun-controllers always dismiss due process claims, saying they only make it easier for bad guys to do wrong and leave innocent victims at their mercy. Basically, they don’t like due process because due process makes it harder for them to take those guns.
NVFAC’s argument is this: It should be difficult to deprive someone of a constitutional right! Governments in America are instituted to protect the rights of individuals, and the Second Amendment is as much a right as free speech and freedom of religion. If you have a constitution that doesn’t mean what it says, you don’t have a constitution! As citizens, we need to honor and enforce it, and see to it that our governments do the same, or lose it.
The current legal standard for forfeiture of 2A rights in mental health cases is spelled out in the Gun Control Act of 1968, the mother lode of gun-grabbing by government in America. It requires an involuntary judicial commitment for mental health reasons to forfeit gun rights, and the judicial hearing resulting in involuntary commitment must be in a court of competent authority, before an impartial judge, where the person in question is allowed to be present in court, be represented by counsel, have the opportunity to present arguments and evidence in his favor, including compulsory process for witnesses, and rights of appeal – in other words, full due process. The core of it for our purposes today is that the judicial hearing resulting in involuntary commitment must be in a court of competent authority before an impartial judge, where the person in question is allowed to be present in court, be represented by counsel, have the opportunity to present arguments and evidence in his favor, including compulsory process for witnesses. That legal core of due process is absent from most Red Flag laws in general, and with Nevada’s Red Flag laws in particular, which have no such requirement. If the Roberts Supreme Court ever takes up Red Flag laws, my prediction is that they will fail on those due process grounds.
- AB 500, Allowing for Payments Banks – NVFAC Supported; Bill Failed.
AB 500, sponsored by Speaker of the Assembly, Steve Yeager, a Democrat, was a bill dealing unwittingly with a specific and serious 2A issue, and deserves special mention.
AB 500 would have addressed debanking, which is when a financial institution, such as a bank or payments processor suddenly, and usually with no notice and no recourse, closes the bank or payment processing accounts of gun dealers, gun manufacturers, federal firearms licensees, or other gun-related businesses, such as the NVFAC PAC (we were subject to just such discrimination on three occasions, most recently this past January). From 2023 to 2017, debanking was the official policy of the Obama Department of Justice, which encouraged debanking of gun-related businesses. They even had a name for it, Operation Choke Point, which tells you they knew what they were doing, and were going for the jugular of the firearms industry. The first Trump administration put a stop to that in 2017, but many progressive banks and financial instances, and other businesses have continued the practice on their own to this day.
AB 500 would have allowed for the chartering in Nevada of payments banks, or processing banks. Such banks could have been opened for specific industries such as the firearms industry, and opened a reliable source of payment and financial processing beyond the reach of bigoted anti-gun activists and governments. NVFAC and it’s PAC strongly supported that bill in defense of the Second Amendment, which is of little use if citizens cannot buy guns, or can’t get their gun-related purchases processed, which was the motive behind the Obama Administration’s Operation Choke Point. Unfortunately for the gun industry in Nevada and the nation, AB 500 failed to pass on the next-to-last day of the session.
AB 500 made for some interesting politics. Four Republican Assemblywomen, Lisa Cole, Rebecca Edgeworth, Alexis Hansen, and Melissa Hardy, voted for the bill on May 30, but two days later on the final Assembly vote, changed their votes and were against it. In their defense, there was much confusion around this bill, and we hope the bill’s sponsors will spend some time during the interim period educating legislators on the considerable potential this bill has for Nevadans and for the state.
The 2025 legislative session is over, and now your gun rights are in the hands of Governor Lombardo and his veto pen, which he used after the 2023 session to veto similar bills as these. We are asking him to do so again this time around.
This is also a cautionary tale for the 2026 election. Conservatives, Republicans, and gun owners won’t have Donald Trump on the ballot to bring out voters. Democrats, who’s ranks include Nevada’s current crop of gun-grabbers, are still only two seats shy of a super-majority in both chambers, with which they can over-ride any veto Joe Lombardo writes.
If you care about your gun rights, you had best campaign and vote next time like your gun rights depend on it, because they will.
