The gun control debate in Nevada’s Legislature has in recent decades been focused on one front: How far should the state loosen restriction on gun owners’ rights?

But now, in the wake of last week’s elementary school shooting in Connecticut and a 2011 shooting that left four dead and 14 wounded at a Carson City IHOP, one lawmaker said he wants to steer the conversation another way, addressing the “third rail” of Nevada politics.

“I think the expansion of gun rights has reached its apogee,” said Sen. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I look forward to spending the next decade trying to limit weapons of mass destruction.”

Segerblom said he “supports reasonable restrictions on handguns and assault weapons and concealed weapons.”

His statements reflect a break from Nevada Democratic and Republican party platforms, which historically have stressed a strict adherence to the rights of gun ownership.

Support for the Second Amendment’s right of individual gun ownership has a strong history in Nevada, a libertarian political environment with a strong distrust of the federal government. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been regarded as a pro-gun lawmaker.

But on Monday, Reid called for a change in the “laws and culture that allow this violence to continue to grow” and said “every idea should be on the table as we discuss how best to do just that.” He stopped short, however, of calling for a national discussion on gun control.

In Nevada, two Democratic lawmakers fell over each other in 2011 arguing about authorship of legislation that was advocated by the National Rifle Association.

Any effort to stir up a gun control debate is sure to get a response from both sides of the aisle. Gun rights supporters packed a legislative committee meeting this summer and successfully stopped a discussion about assault weapons, pushed by Assemblyman William Horne, D-Las Vegas.

“It’s a characteristic, really, of the Western states,” said John Cahill, president of the Nevada Outdoor Democratic Caucus and elected Clark County public administrator. He suspects some Las Vegas Democrats would like to tackle the issue, but “a lot of Democrats just want to leave it alone. They know it’s a third rail. Democrats want to win everywhere.”

Cahill, who stressed he was not speaking for the Democratic Party, said gun control is not the solution to gun violence.

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