Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Q+A: JIM DUNLAP:

Law enforcement union leader explains his support of background checks

gunpoll

M. Spencer Green / AP file (2010)

Guns are displayed July 22, 2010, at the Chicago FBI office. A new poll shows most young adults across racial and ethnic groups support tighter gun polices including background checks, stricter penalties for gun law violations, and banning semi-automatic weapons.

QUESTION 1

Shall Chapter 202 of the Nevada Revised Statutes be amended to prohibit, except in certain circumstances, a person from selling or transferring a firearm to another person unless a federally-licensed dealer first conducts a federal background check on the potential buyer or transferee?

Officially, most Las Vegas law enforcement officers aren’t taking sides on a November ballot issue to expand background checks for gun buyers.

The Nevada Association of Public Safety Officers is an exception. Not only has the union endorsed the measure, it’s making its opinion heard.

Jim Dunlap, the union’s president, has appeared in a TV ad supporting the initiative, which would close a loophole that allows buyers to avoid background checks in private transactions through sites that connect sellers with buyers, at gun shows and elsewhere. The measure would extend a longstanding federal requirement for background checks on purchases from licensed gun dealers.

Although Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo and the union that represents the majority of Metro Police officers are being neutral on the issue, Dunlap said his organization supported it out of a strong belief that it would improve public safety. The union represents more than 1,500 police officers, corrections officers and probation officers statewide.

Jim Dunlap

Jim Dunlap

Dunlap, a law enforcement officer for 22 years in Boulder City and Henderson, was among three ballot measure proponents who attended a discussion on the topic recently at the offices of Greenspun Media Group, which publishes The Sunday.

Here are excerpts from that discussion.

Unlike Sheriff Lombardo, most of the state’s 16 other sheriffs have come out against ballot Question 1. What’s your response to that?

If this saves one life, doesn’t it make sense? Isn’t that what laws are for, public safety? As top law enforcement officials, they have an obligation to their employees and to the people who elect them. They say their opposition is about the Second Amendment, but our stand is on public safety. This measure will make it safer for our communities, safer for public employees and safer for the people we represent.

Some law enforcement authorities say the measure won’t help increase public safety, arguing that criminals will find a way to get a gun regardless of the background check requirement. Is that a valid argument?

Let’s say someone, acting in anger, tries to get a firearm. They can’t go to a dealer because they’d have to undergo a background check, so they go to the internet or a gun show and get a weapon relatively quickly, then go back and do a heinous crime. With this background check, we’ll close the loophole and prevent them from getting a weapon at a gun show or meeting a guy in a parking lot (after using a website to set up a gun sale) and going home still angry. We are saving people’s lives.

But what about the argument that someone in that same situation could go to the black market?

People don’t stand on corners and sell drugs or guns. The criminal element, the people who are involved in the black market, they sell only to people they know. That’s why cops use confidential informants to buy drugs. And even within those organizations in the drug trade, and when you have a confidential informant, trying to purchase a gun is even more of a challenge, because use or possession of a firearm with those crimes comes with heightened penalties. So how do you find someone to buy a gun from on the black market? If you did find someone dealing guns illegally and said, “Hey, you got a gun I can buy?” They’d probably say, “Are you a cop?” So that just won’t happen. People see it on TV shows, but it doesn’t happen.

Another argument from the opponents of the measure is that it will be burdensome for law enforcement. Will it?

What people need to understand is that crimes are generally reported to us (as opposed to officers rooting them out). Are we going to go door to door and ask, “Did you sell a gun to someone who shouldn’t have one?” No, we’re not, anymore than we go door to door asking, “Are you selling illegal drugs?” If people report to us that guns were sold illegally, we’d respond. And as with any situation, we prioritize our calls for service. So it won’t be more taxing.

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