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A big legal fight is brewing involving two pro-gun casinos that both want to prevent a gun store/shooting range from opening up in their high-rent neighborhood on the Las Vegas Strip. What’s wrong with this picture? The Venetian and Wynn Las Vegas hotels have both asked the Clark County Planning Commission to reverse its approval for a Beretta gun boutique and shooting range inside The Shoppes At The Palazzo resort.

I’m not sure exactly what stirred up this tempest in a (Wedgewood) teacup, but you can bet your Browning it’s not any of the usual suspects like race-baiting politics or leftist anti-gun hysteria. The Wynn hotel is owned by Steve Wynn, a billionaire who has given megabucks to Karl Rove and his Crossroads GPS superpac, and The Venetian plays host to the SHOT Show every year, where tens of thousands of shooting industry professionals fondle tens of thousands of guns for the better part of a week.

The  Commission already approved the Beretta proposal by a vote of 4-1. According to the Las Vegas Sun, the commissioners were highly skeptical of the casinos’ arguments against the Beretta Outlet Store. One commissioner verged on calling The Venetian’s attorney a hypocrite, citing that hotel’s annual SHOT Show extravaganza. Another noted that Clark County, Nevada has a 72-hour waiting period for most pistol purchases.

Nonresident shoppers, of course, won’t be able to buy handguns there at all under Federal law, and I think it’s safe to predict that very few disgruntled postal workers deranged shooters would try to wreak havoc with a handmade Italian shotgun costing more than the average American’s annual salary. The Beretta store will feature plenty of presumably armed security, just in case I’m wrong.

So what is all this fuss about? I’m stumped, but the Wynn and Venetian hotels have promised a lawsuit if the Planning Commission doesn’t reverse course. We’ll keep you posted.

 

22 COMMENTS

  1. Wait a minute. In a part of town where almost the entire economic structure is based around non-residents buying RIDICULOUSLY overpriced goods and impulse purchases, they want to open a shop where non-residents can’t buy a ton of the products and impulse purchasing is nearly impossible for those products? Yeah, great idea.

    • I think RF is engaging in a rare bout of hyperbole. In many states you can purchase long guns out of state, and in either case you can always transfer it to your local FFL. Technically you would be buying from your local FFL, but it is a distinction without a difference. If it is truly luxury they will probably make the arrangements for you.

      • This wasn’t intended as an article about the legality of nonresident firearms purchases, but it looks like I need to straighten a few things out.

        1. Clark County, Nevada has a 72-hour waiting period for handguns, unless the purchaser has already *registered* a handgun with the Sheriff.

        2. Federal law probibits transfers of handguns to nonresidents, period, so you can buy a Model 92 there if you want, but you’ll have to have it shipped to your home-state FFL before you take possession.

        3. Federal law permits long-gun purchases by residents of neighboring states, so a Palazzo Shoppe-er from CA, OR, ID, UT or AZ will presumably be allowed to take immediate possession of their long gun if they’ve got the cash. And if my knowledge of geography is correct. Other nonresident buyers would have to have their long gun shipped to their home-state FFL.

        • That does make a little more sense business wise, but the 72 hour waiting period will definitely hurt impulse buy profits.

        • Yes, but… Proximal state or not, the 72 hour rule does not apply to long guns (I am not a Nevada lawyer, nor do I play one on tv, so take anything I say with a grain of salt). Assuming that is true, and further assuming that a fancy pants Beretta shoppe was more interested in selling several thousand dollar shotguns than several hundred dollar 92s, then the impulse buy aspect is still not a problem. Said impulse purchaser may regret dropping a couple $K by the time the shotty shows up at their local FFL, but they probably wouldn’t be able to send it back.

        • Correction, Clark County does not require a 72 hour wait. The City of Las Vegas does on a first time purchase. Unless you can show you have a blue card. Henderson has no such restriction, neither does Boulder City, to the best of my knowledge.

          The Palazzo has no intention of selling ammo or firearms! Nor will any one be allowed to bring those items in. All firearms are to be a rentable item, and the only ammo you can shoot is what the range will require.

  2. The SHOT Show event aside (which most guests staying with them at other times of the year will probably never hear about), are they simply over-reacting out of concern not to upset some of their anti-gun guests arriving from NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, etc?

    “involving two pro-gun casinos” I’m not sure what that means. Do they allow CC holder or open-carry guns into their casinos? If so then there position is really strange.

    • The spam filter doesn’t like you. Sorry. If I could reprogram it I would. Meanwhile, I vow to be more diligent in my spam checking efforts.

    • Mine were doing that yesterday, too. I suspect that the website admin failed to sacrifice the obligatory rubber chicken to the computer gods last week.

      RE: the Beretta Store. I suspect the protesting casinos wished they had thought of it first, or they have their own high-end gun stores planned and do not want any competition. Besides, if some high-roller buys a $30,000 shotgun, that’s $30k less that he has to spend somewhere else, right?

    • You ran afoul of the spam filter somehow. It happened to me yesterday, and only after my comment was approved (16 hours after I wrote it) and I read it again did I figure out why. I’m pretty sure it was the line “Assault weapons are like the old saying about pr0n. I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it,” except I spelled the p-word correctly, and apparently that’s a no-no. matt likes to run afoul of the filter with the word anlaytics, except spelled right, because he quotes Google Anlaytics with some regularity. I’ve had links kick me to the spam filter, too, but I’ve never been able to figure out what makes those links special, because most fly right through.

    • Lost my edit button on that one, wanted to add…

      It’s only really annoying when you’re in the middle of a forth-and-back conversation and you get kicked to the filter for something innocuous. Kinda kills the flow to introduce an 8-16 hour break.

      • I think Robert should compensate us for emotional duress after we put our heart into writing a comment that doesn’t post until hours later.

        • Haha, no kidding. It’s never the throwaway comments that get lost, either. It’s always the ones that have a lot of time and consideration put into them, so it’s a kick in the gut when they don’t appear.

  3. Sorry to comment on an older post, but I need to clarify a couple of points since I work for the folks who enforce the firearms rules. 1) Chris referenced the neighboring states. That is referred to as the contigious states rule, which is superceded in most states by the NICS (national insta check system). Since Nevada is a POC (point of contact) state, they use their own check, not NICS. Ultimately, an out of state person could come to Nevada and purchase a firearm as long as he resided in a state where the purchase and/or possession would not be prohibited. They would not necessarily have to live in a contigious state. Also, I am not sure but i believe that a California resident cannot buy a longun out of state, it is a violation of california state law. Of course, as pointed out here, you can only buy a handgun in the state where you reside. 2) the registration of handguns in Nevada is a Clark County ordinance. Boulder city is somehow exempted, but anywhere else in the county requires registration. Nevada State law provided that counties with a population of 400,000 or more could inact this ordinance, and Clark county is the only county in the state that has the population to do it. It applies to handguns only, and is not required if you live in Nevada, but not in Clark County. Hope that helps.

  4. I see that the Beretta Gallery will not open now. Just ignorance of the Venetian management. This would have been a nice addition to the Vegas area. Just another reason not to go to the Venetian/Palazzo, the worse run properties in Vegas.

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