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Stop the presses! Republicans and Democrats compromise on gun bill!

Who says Democrats and Republicans can’t agree, especially when it comes to controversial issues such as guns?

At least on one recent piece of legislation — Senate Bill 175 — members of both parties came together to amend a bill in a way that made it better, albeit not perfect.

As introduced, the bill had some problems. It may have allowed people to simply shoot car burglars, for one. It established a principle of justifiable homicide for killings in cases in which a person “…knew or had reason to believe that the person who was killed was entering unlawfully and with force, or attempting to enter unlawfully and with force, the habitation or property of another; knew or had reason to believe that the person who was killed was committing or attempting to commit a felony” (emphasis added). And it would have given anybody with a concealed weapons permit from another state license to carry freely in Nevada.

Democrats objected. At a hearing over the bill, recent incidents of violence against minorities — especially the killing of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Florida — were mentioned. Majority Republicans had the votes and the power to push the bill through anyway, and probably get it passed in the Assembly and signed by the governor.

But they didn’t.

Instead, bill author Michael Roberson, R-Henderson, accepted some suggested changes in an amendment. Among the changes:

• Stipulated that deadly force could be used in defense of an occupied motor vehicle. Under that scenario, a person could not shoot a car burglar trying to steal the contents of an unoccupied car, but could use deadly force to repel a potential carjacker.

• Changed a presumption of justifiable homicide to a rebuttable presumption in cases of a person trying to break into a home. In the law, a rebuttable presumption is a legal inference based on certain facts that may be overcome with other evidence. In other words, a rebuttable presumption that a person was justified in shooting another person could be overcome, for example, by proving that the killer lured the victim to the scene of the murder in order to commit a homicide.

• Changed “knew or had reason to believe” to “reasonably believed.” While that appears to be a minor change, it has significant legal meaning: In the former, the subjective state of mind of the person doing the killing is the focus. In the latter, the focus shifts to whether the killer had a reasonable basis to believe that the person he targeted was entering a dwelling unlawfully or with force to commit a crime of violence.

• Instead of giving carte blanche to every state’s concealed weapons permits, Nevada under the amendment will only recognize permits issued by states that offer training, classes or a program for people who want to carry concealed weapons in their home state. (Most do, but this would eliminate states with very low standard for concealed weapons permits.)

As a result of those changes, the final version of SB 175 passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee March 13 unanimously, with Republicans and Democrats in agreement. And it passed the Senate today on a vote of 14 to 5, with two members absent. It’s far from unanimous, but it got more votes than it otherwise would have received, because Roberson was willing to accept amendments and Democrats were willing to work to make a bill they didn’t like a little bit better.

So we know it’s possible. Now we have to see how common it will be as the session progresses.

A side note: Roberson also authored Senate Bill 240, heard today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, that would allow voluntary background checks free of charge for people who want to sell their guns to another private party. Currently, gun sales conducted in a licensed gun store require a criminal background check, but private-party sales don’t. An initiative that will appear on the November 2016 ballot would extend the background check requirement to all gun sales, but Roberson’s bill would not impose the same requirement. (It would also provide civil and criminal immunity to people who sell firearms without bothering to do a background check.) Democrats rejected a similar measure in 2013.

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