Nevada Republican running for Congress says he stands by old post mocking calls for gun reform after Oct. 1 shooting

Drew Johnson told a reporter he stood by old social media posts, including one published on Oct. 3, 2017 in which he wrote: “If only we banned murder, that would’ve stopped the #LasVagasShooting (sic), huh nanny staters?”

In the days that followed the Route 91 Harvest music festival shooting seven years ago, Las Vegans quickly rallied behind the scores of survivors, mourners, and first responders to help in whatever manner possible, whether that was donating blood, volunteering time and resources to relief efforts and counseling, and in many cases, calling for stronger gun laws. 

But just two days after the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, the man who is the 2024 Republican nominee to represent Nevada’s Third Congressional District, took a different approach. Drew Johnson, a conservative opinion writer and policy analyst, used his then-public, now-private personal account on X (formerly Twitter), to call those demands for stricter gun laws a knee-jerk reaction that would infringe on the freedom of gun owners.

“If only we banned murder, that would’ve stopped the #LasVagasShooting (sic), huh nanny staters?” Johnson posted on Oct. 3, 2017, using a term to describe overprotective government action at the expense of limiting personal freedoms. 

Johnson’s comment was resurfaced in August by his opponent, Democratic incumbent Susie Lee, as part of a microsite highlighting a series of controversial posts Johnson made on his personal account. 

In a recent interview with the Mohave Valley Daily News, Johnson acknowledged making the posts and said they were made in a personal capacity before he considered running for public office.

“Susie Lee attacking me for commenting as a private citizen on surprising statistics from news stories, making sarcastic comments to an internet troll and calling out a US Senator for wasting taxpayers’ hard-earned money is pathetic, but it’s exactly what I expect from the most corrupt member of Congress,” Johnson told the Mohave Valley Daily News for a story that ran in the Sept. 20 print edition. 

He reportedly told the outlet he stands by the opinions he expressed on the account. 

The Nevadan in August reported on some of Johnson’s posts made under his @Drews_Views account, in which he posted about abolishing the federal drinking age and reducing rates of sexual violence by opening more strip clubs. Despite the account being listed as private, screen grabs of several posts that were provided to The Nevadan were verified by using a tool from the Internet Archive known as the Wayback Machine. 

But Lee’s site attacking Johnson features additional posts not initially featured in The Nevadan’s story that ran on Aug. 26, including his response to the Las Vegas shooting which ultimately left 60 people dead and hundreds of others wounded.

Tuesday marks the seven-year anniversary of the shooting. The gunman fired on concertgoers from a Las Vegas Strip resort overlooking the festival grounds, and used assault-style rifles equipped with accessories known as bump stocks — which can harness the recoil of a semi-automatic weapon to fire at a rate comparable to a machine gun — to fire more than 1,000 rounds in a span of roughly 11 minutes. 

The shooting reignited the debate over gun safety in the US, with Congressional Democrats and Republicans — particularly in Nevada — urging colleagues to take action against bump stocks. Despite that, Republicans from other states have blocked several attempts to advance a bill banning bump stocks. 

The Trump administration even issued a regulation banning bump stocks in 2018, but that effort was overturned by the US Supreme Court in June, with the court’s conservative majority ruling that such a regulation would need to be enacted by Congress and signed by the President before becoming law. 

Since joining the House in 2019, Lee, along with Nevada’s two other Democratic US representatives, has supported several gun safety measures, including those to ban bump stocks. Lee is also a co-sponsor of Nevada Rep. Dina Titus’ Closing the Bump Stock Loophole Act, but with GOP control of the chamber, the bill has yet to be referred out of committee. 

Lee’s microsite also features other unreported posts made from Johnson, including one sharing an article stating that more Americans die from circumcisions each year than mass gun violence, and others attacking the retirement age and Social Security solvency.

Johnson attacks Lee on supposed business dealings

The microsite operated by Johnson’s campaign sharply criticizes Lee’s voting record, and her opposition to corporate landlords, but also alleges a former family member benefitted from a pandemic-era relief program and that she’s made millions on stock market transactions. 

Full House Resorts, which owns gaming properties in Nevada, Colorado, and Indiana, is operated by Lee’s ex-husband Dan Lee. The two divorced in 2021, and the company was a recipient of a forgivable loan worth roughly $5.6 million through Paycheck Protection Program, which was part of a 2020 stimulus package to help employers make payroll in the early months of the pandemic while several nonessential businesses (including gaming establishments) were ordered to temporarily halt business to help stem the spread of COVID-19. 

Nevada’s Congressional delegation, including Lee, worked with regulators after the first round of federal pandemic aid was passed into law to ensure that small gaming businesses could access the loan program. 

Lee has refuted that her support to include gaming operators in pandemic-era relief packages had to do with her personal relationships, but rather said it was in the best interest of Nevada’s gaming-reliant economy. She told The Daily Beast in 2020 that she had no role in Full House Resort’s decision to apply for the loans. 

Johnson has also attacked Lee over congressional reports that have found the congresswoman failed to disclose stock trades worth between $250,000 and $3 million as quickly as law requires. Public disclosure reports from the Clerk’s office of the US House say Lee was tardy in disclosing at least 200 stock trades, in violation of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012. There is no indication, however, that any of Lee’s investment activities were left undisclosed. 

Federal law gives lawmakers 30 days from when they learn of a stock trade made on behalf of them or a spouse or 45 days from the date of the trade to formally disclose it publicly. Despite the tardy filings, Lee has avoided late disclosure penalties as congressional officials largely waive the $200 fine on a late trading disclosure as long as it occurred no more than 30 days past the imposed deadline, the Mohave Valley Daily News reported. 

A spokesperson for Lee’s office further told the publication that Lee was not directly involved in the stock trades in question, adding that those funds were overseen by an independent financial manager with no input from the congresswoman. 

Upon learning of the transactions, Lee reportedly worked with the House Ethics Committee to correct the disclosures to comply with those requirements. 

Race heating up

While polling in all of Nevada’s US House contests have been scant, an August poll from Emerson College found Lee leading Johnson by roughly 13 percentage points in a survey of 298 likely voters. But if Lee’s 2022 re-election campaign is any indicator, the results come Election Day could be much tighter. 

Lee defeated Republican challenger April Becker by 10,003 votes, a margin of about four percentage points — the tightest of Nevada’s four US House districts. Lee is the favorite to win, according to the Cook Political Report, as her seat is predicted as a “lean Democrat,” and outside Republican groups like the National Republican Congressional Committee have signaled a hesitancy to spend heavily in Nevada districts currently being represented by Democrats. 

Still, Johnson pulled out a surprising win in a crowded June primary election that featured former state treasurer Dan Schwartz, acclaimed video game music composer Marty O’Donnell, and others. Johnson’s only other run for political office was a 2022 run for the Clark County Commission, a race he lost by just 336 votes. 

As of Tuesday, just five weeks remain until the Nov. 5 election. Whether voters will consider Johnson’s views as disqualifying is yet to be seen. 

But that won’t stop Lee’s campaign from attempting to make the argument. 

“Drew Johnson thinks he can hide who he really is from voters, but southern Nevadans are too smart to be fooled by an unhinged policy blogger,” Kyla Sabado, Lee’s campaign manager, said in an Aug. 29 statement announcing the launch of the “Drew’s Views” microsite. “He is not fit to represent Nevada’s Third Congressional District.”