LETTERS: Wranglers’ downtown facility leads to unanswered questions
To the editor:
Regarding the announcement of the new venue for the Las Vegas Wranglers hockey team, what a blazing headline (“Wranglers moving downtown,” Feb. 15 Review-Journal). First, no one knows who is going to pay for construction of this tent. It sounds like the Plaza had plans for a convention center, and the Wranglers agreed to play in it, although the team’s officials want you to believe it’s their idea.
How do you get that many fans onto Main Street at one time, especially on a weekend, all trying to find parking? Then once inside, how do you get them on an elevator to the fifth floor? Certainly ticket prices will have to increase to help pay for the tent, or to share part of the gate. The hotel will get a seat block, limiting access to regular fans. Worse yet, how about the guests in the two towers who have to listen to the crowd yelling and the loud music.
I have been a Wranglers season ticket-holder. I am reluctant to be thrilled with this idea, and I’m not sure it will come to fruition. If it does, I hope Las Vegas police are on Main Street to arrest the drunken drivers. This tent idea is a desperate attempt, and I am sure many fans have not thought of the repercussions of the Wranglers’ move to the Plaza.
TAD MANN
LAS VEGAS
Gun control
To the editor:
Regarding Steve Sebelius’ Feb. 14 column (“Gun PAC misfires badly in criticism of Justin Jones”), he must not know that it is already against both Nevada and federal law to sell a firearm to a prohibited possessor — felons or those adjudicated as mentally unfit. He must not know it is already a state and federal felony for those people to possess a firearm. A state program already exists for Nevada citizens to run background checks, free of charge, on people to whom they wish to sell guns.
That did not count for much when a Reno police officer privately sold a firearm to a mentally ill person in the wake of Gov. Brian Sandoval’s veto of state Senate Bill 221. No one was charged under the existing law when that happened — not the seller, and not the mentally ill buyer.
It also did not count for much when Nevada’s courts systematically failed to send records of thousands of mental disability findings to the Nevada criminal history repository, as required by law, so that those so adjudicated could be designated as prohibited firearms possessors and flagged by the required background checks if they tried to buy a gun. So tell me again about the benefits of SB 221? Nevada already has the laws in place to do what needs to be done without infringing on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. So what would be different had SB 221 become law?
The weight would have fallen on those law-abiding gun owners, while criminals ignored the law with impunity, since the author crafted it without a means of enforcement and provided no way for law enforcement to know whether a firearm had been legally transferred. As a practical matter, the only way to do that, and to enforce such a law, is with universal firearms registration, which aside from the serious civil liberties concerns has never worked anywhere it has been tried.
SB 221 also would have discouraged those with mental health problems from seeking help for fear of forfeiting their constitutional right to keep and bear arms, which the bill required for anyone seeking help by voluntarily committing themselves for mental health care. The bill also had no provision for constitutionally required due legal process (a judicial determination of mental disqualifications with the opportunity to rebut evidence) for the mentally ill people it would strip of a civil right.
The law also would have complicated the lives of law-abiding citizens when they tried to sell or transfer a gun to friends or relatives. Contrary to what Mr. Sebelius may think, criminals get their guns from the underground market, which is fed by thefts, with very few guns being traced back to private owners at gun shows. SB 221 would also have made life so difficult for federal firearms licensees — gun dealers — that they testified before the Legislature that they would have refused to process the mandatory transfers, because they had no way of knowing whether the guns they were transferring were stolen, thus exposing them to federal felony charges of dealing in stolen guns.
MYRON R. MARTIN
LAS VEGAS
Firefighters’ shopping
To the editor:
The recent letters to the editor regarding our firefighters’ grocery shopping habits have certainly developed into a real tempest in a teapot, prompting my attention. As an old-time fireman, I usually did our grocery shopping on my day off. I had been a cook in the Navy, so my fellow firefighters assigned the cooking duties to me.
We of course chipped in each payday for our food items. We’d discuss our menu ideas freely around the day room or table. There were never any problems.
Of course, this all took place 60 years ago, when we weren’t as smart as we are today.
PAUL W. ROM
LAS VEGAS
Keystone pipeline
To the editor:
The Keystone XL pipeline plan is a lie. There will be as many as 6,000 jobs created for one year to finish construction. After that, it will employ 30 people for maintenance and oversight. Thirty people. This is from the company’s own figures, released by court order.
The claim of the number of jobs created varies widely and wildly, from 20,000 to 42,100, to as many as 400,000. The figures released by Trans-Canada (by court order) do not support anything close to these numbers.
And besides, more than 60 percent of the oil — if delivered — has been contracted to other countries. It won’t stay here to lower our gas prices.
KURT SEAMANS
LAS VEGAS
