During his campaign for governor, then-Sheriff Joe Lombardo claimed the Las Vegas police department he led seized just six ghost guns in one year. But officers actually seized 252 of the weapons during that time.



 


Ghost guns ‘not a big issue’? Las Vegas police records say otherwise


In June 2021, a 17-year-old pulled a pistol out of his Louis Vuitton shoulder bag and fatally shot a 39-year-old man in the parking lot of a Las Vegas apartment complex. In this case, the weapon used was a ghost gun — a firearm originally sold as unfinished parts without a serial number or background check and assembled at home.

That same day, Joe Lombardo, sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, met on Zoom with a group of pro-gun voters. He was in the early stages of his campaign for the Republican nomination for governor. The event was held by the Nevada Firearms Coalition PAC. When the group’s lobbyist, Randi Thompson, asked about his stance on ghost guns, Lombardo downplayed the prevalence of the untraceable, easy-to-assemble firearms. He said his department had tracked only six incidents involving ghost guns over the previous year and none of those guns had been used in crimes. Lombardo told Thompson that ghost guns were “not a big issue.”

But according to a list of impounded ghost guns his department maintained at the time, Lombardo’s claims were wildly inaccurate. Las Vegas police seized more than 200 ghost guns in the year leading up to his June interview, according to an analysis by KUNR Public Radio and APM Reports.

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