Pahrump search warrant leads to guns seizure, domestic violence arrest
A domestic violence call in Pahrump led deputies to a search warrant, where they seized a rifle, seven handguns and brass knuckles.
A Pahrump domestic violence call turned into a firearms case when Nye County deputies served a search warrant and seized a rifle, seven handguns, brass knuckles and two filled ammunition cans from a home tied to 50-year-old John Preston.
The case began when a deputy responded on May 14 to a domestic violence report. In the arrest report, Preston’s wife told police he had slapped her twice about a week earlier and said there had been ongoing domestic violence problems in the home. Authorities also received an anonymous tip that the same man might be keeping multiple firearms, a detail that pushed the case from a family disturbance into a public-safety search.
Deputies executed the warrant on May 15 and arrested Preston without incident. Law enforcement described him as a prohibited person because of a prior sexual-offense conviction, which meant he could not legally possess firearms. He was booked on eight counts of suspected gun possession by a prohibited person.
Nevada law bars firearm possession by several categories of prohibited persons, including people convicted of certain felonies, misdemeanor domestic violence offenses and stalking offenses with firearm restrictions, as well as those subject to qualifying protective orders. Federal law also prohibits firearm possession by certain prohibited persons, including convicted felons. In cases like this one, that legal status matters as much as the reported domestic violence history, because it gives deputies a clear enforcement path when there is reason to believe a banned person may also be armed.
The seizure also reflected the kind of overlapping workload the Nye County Sheriff’s Office handles from its headquarters at 1520 E. Basin Ave. in Pahrump, the county’s largest population center. In recent weeks, the agency also took part in a two-day multi-agency interdiction operation with Nevada Highway Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations, aimed at drug trafficking and other criminal activity on county highways. Taken together, the domestic-violence warrant and the highway operation show a department balancing inside-the-home threats with wider enforcement along the travel corridors that cut across Nye County.
The case lands as sheriff remains one of the nonpartisan offices on the June 9, 2026, Nye County primary ballot, putting local policing and public-safety decisions under even closer public attention.
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