LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Shane Tamura, a Las Vegas man with a documented history of mental health issues, was able to legally purchase the rifle used in a deadly mass shooting in New York City earlier this week.
WATCH | Why red flags weren't raised during Tamura's firearm purchase
Tamura opened fire inside a Midtown Manhattan high-rise on Monday evening, killing four people and critically injuring a fifth. Investigators say he fired 47 rounds from an M4-style assault rifle, reloading at least once during the rampage before taking his own life.
Tamura’s past includes two involuntary psychiatric holds— known as Legal 2000s in Nevada — one in 2022 and another in 2024. He was also cited for misdemeanor trespassing by Las Vegas police in 2023. Yet none of those encounters legally barred him from purchasing a firearm.
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“Things like being a felon, being a habitual user of substances, being an illegal alien in the United States, denouncing your citizenship, or having a dishonorable discharge from the military — those types of things are documented and recorded so that they can be reported because they preclude you from owning or possessing a firearm,” said Josh Tomsheck, an attorney in Las Vegas with Hofland & Tomsheck.
“Simply having a Legal 2000 hold or an allegation that someone’s got a general mental health issue isn’t going to preclude them under state or federal law, so it’s not going to come up in a background check.”

Even the trespassing citation, which stemmed from a disturbance at the Red Rock Casino in 2023, would not disqualify someone from gun ownership unless it resulted in a conviction for a disqualifying offense, such as domestic violence.
Tamura obtained the rifle used in the shooting through a private-party sale at Green Valley Range in Henderson, facilitated by a surveillance supervisor at the Horseshoe Las Vegas, where Tamura was employed. According to the attorney representing the supervisor, the transaction was conducted in compliance with Nevada state law, which requires all private-party gun sales to be processed through a federally licensed firearms dealer (FFL), including a background check.

“Everything sounds like it was reported the way it should be here, and it doesn’t seem like anything fell through the cracks,” Tomsheck said.
Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo also addressed the situation in an interview with Channel 13, stressing the legal distinction between temporary mental health holds and formal judicial rulings.

“There’s a big difference between a mental health hold versus a conviction or an adjudication… Once you have that, law enforcement has the ability to access that information, and the gun dealers have the ability through their background checks," Governor Lombardo said.