Peace and Prosperity

In this age of mass surveillance, it is uncommon to hear of the destroying of a government’s surveillance database — even if in just one American county. Yet, that is what the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is preparing to do.

As required by Senate Bill 175 that the Nevada governor signed into law on June 2, the police department appears set to destroy, within a year, all physical and digital records of handgun owners that the police department has accumulated under a Clark County registration requirement implemented in 1948.

Chris Eger, in a Monday Guns.com article, relates the police department spokesman’s explanation of what will be done with the decades-old database of handgun owners in the county:

‘The records must be destroyed after one year,’ Officer Jesse Roybal, spokesman for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s Office of Public Information, told Guns.com.

The collection, which Roybal said dates back at least to 1965, is on a countdown to destruction mandated by the new law.

‘We still have paper, digital, and microfiche registrations,’ Roybal said. ‘We will physically make sure the paper and microfiche are shredded and the digital registrations are deleted.’