The Old West met the New West last week in Carson City.

As I listened to state senators debate the legislation meant to implement Nevada’s practical and voter-approved gun background check law, that thought kept coming back to me.

Old versus new.

Rural versus urban.

The way things were, and the way things are.

It was the Old West exemplified by the rough-hewn rancher packing a big iron on his hip, or a Winchester racked in his pickup. It was the New West of rapidly growing communities with urban complexities and neighborhoods awash in weaponry, realities that many of our rural cousins might find hard to appreciate.

Rural and conservative lawmakers unfurled the Stars and Stripes, talked about the U.S. Constitution, waxed nostalgic about hunting trips taken in childhood and sometimes described the firearm as a tool — albeit one made by the sacrosanct Second Amendment.

Listeners were reminded more than once that 16 of Nevada’s 17 counties had failed to pass the Question 1 ballot measure, the Nevada Background Checks for Gun Purchases Initiative. They were presumably also intelligent enough to understand that the one county that overwhelmingly voted in favor of the measure is the one with most of the people — and most of the gun violence. Question 1 passed by more than 100,000 votes in Clark County but fewer than 10,000 votes statewide.

For its part, the New Westerners were decidedly of the Democratic Party that swept into the majority in Carson City and waltzed into most of the state’s constitutional offices. They had several emotional issues bolstering their argument, not the least of which was the fact that Las Vegas was the site of the largest mass shooting in American history. The Oct. 1 shooting, in my mind, haunted the proceedings and shrouded the political debate in grim reality.

But after clearing the tragic apparitions and the political fog from the Legislature, I couldn’t help but come away convinced that the vote to move the background check law forward was not only the smart thing to do, but the right one. If gun buyers are compelled by law to submit to background checks to purchase firearms at gun stores, then they ought to undergo the same scrutiny when buying them on the Internet or at a gun show. And it makes painfully plain sense that persons convicted of domestic violence or subject to a protective order for stalking, harassment or domestic violence shouldn’t be able to purchase firearms without that same background check.

After then-Attorney General Adam Laxalt determined Question 1 was unenforceable because it mandated the background checks be conducted by the FBI, Senate Bill 143 was drafted to place the backgrounders under state jurisdiction. Gov. Steve Sisolak signed the bill into law Friday.

Before the opposing sides return to their separate corners, it’s important to remember that the Old West and the New West aren’t really separated by time, but by wide open space. They’re just distant neighbors, really, with the same hopes and dreams for themselves and their families.

They butted heads, but their spirited sparring was almost without exception above the belt.

That Old West view was well represented by veteran Sens. Pete Goicoechea, a mustachioed rancher from Eureka, and Ira Hansen, a fiercely libertarian NRA man and licensed master plumber from Sparks. While Goicoechea remained folksy Wednesday, Hansen embarked on a history lecture in which the answer to every question was that gun-control measures were not only futile, but unconstitutional as well.

“Guns are a good thing when in the hands of the correct people,” Hansen said at length. “Everybody here agrees that we shouldn’t get them in the hands of crooks. But we have laws and laws and laws and laws on top of other laws, trying to prevent felons and ... mental health issue people from getting those things. And they keep slipping through the cracks right and left. So all we’re going to do here is add one more layer, take away one more right, a simple transfer. If I give my daughter-in-law a gun now, I have now violated the Nevada state law and face prosecution for a gross misdemeanor. And if I do it a second time I could theoretically end up in prison.”

But senators riding in the New West won the day, not merely by their superior numbers and by tugging at the obvious heart strings the law conjured, but by driving home the point that common-sense background checks are not only reasonable and constitutional, but may be the most effective means of deterring gun violence in a free society that in 2019 is loaded with firearms.

State Sen. and military veteran Pat Spearman of North Las Vegas spoke from her experience as a veteran, and as a woman who had lost innocent family members to gun violence. Yvanna Cancela, a one time Culinary Union official in her other life, was among several senators that drove home the point that ensuring background checks across the board and closing the gun show loophole were essential and not intrusive.
“We can talk about mass shootings, and certainly those are a tragedy,” Cancela offered. “Our country’s largest mass shooting happened in my Senate district, on Oct. 1. But the gun violence that background checks addresses is the violence that happens every day in our community that often doesn’t go addressed and doesn’t get reported. Because when people want to usurp the law and get a gun through a private vendor and not undergo a background check, they can do real harm. And so as we think about what a background check is intended to prevent, we should keep in mind those folks who every day are dealing with gun violence in all sorts of ways and making sure that we’re thoughtful about preventing folks who should not ever own a gun from accessing one.”

Cancela’s colleague, Nicole Cannizzaro, a deputy chief in the Clark County district attorney’s office, brought a legal gravity to the issue. Crafting a closing argument is part of her job, and she made a good one as she argued for the essential nature of SB 143 in the wake of the winning ballot question.

“But that piece of legislation has no effect if we allow the individuals who are supposed to be prohibited persons from [possessing] firearms from being able to buy a firearm through a private sale,” Cannizzaro said. “And individuals who have committed domestic violence or who are subject to a protective order for stalking or harassment or domestic violence, are exactly the kinds of people that we should be standing here saying, 'We do not want to give you avenues for access to firearms.'

“And I don’t stand here under the pretense that because we have this law that every person who has ever been convicted of domestic violence, or subject to an order of protection, is going to all of a sudden never going to get a firearm. But if there’s one thing we can do to ensure that that does not happen, that a private seller says, ‘Hey, I want to sell this firearm. And so I’m going to sell it online. But first I’m going to get a background check to first make sure the person that I am giving this firearm to isn’t going to turn around and use it against a person that they have been abusing, I will stand on this floor every single day in support of that. Even if it’s just one person.”

No Nevadan with a foot in either West can reasonably pretend the gun background check law is a cure for the nation’s fever of firearm violence.

But doing nothing in the wake of so much carnage so close to home was no longer an option.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. Contact him at [email protected]. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith