Metro should end handgun registration

To the editor:

Regarding your Oct. 22 story about the $46 million shortfall in the Las Vegas police budget:

I seriously doubt that Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie has, indeed, cut all that can safely be cut from his budget. One obvious target for cutting is Metro's Handgun Registration Unit.

Over the years, Clark County's sheriffs steadfastly have held onto that program, yet when asked about the costs and benefits of handgun registration, they consistently have provided only vague and unsatisfying answers to both questions. Sheriff Gillespie himself consistently has refused to provide meaningful information about how much the unit costs and what real and significant benefits it produces.

In this severely down economy, with tax revenues down and unemployment up, and with little hope that Southern Nevada's economic situation will improve anytime soon, any program that cannot be cost-justified - and especially one that the sheriff refuses to cost-justify - should be a serious candidate for closure, and its resources put where they can do some real good.

Metro's Handgun Registration Unit looks like it fits that bill nicely.

DUNCAN R. MACKIE

LAS VEGAS

The writer is vice president of the legislative division of the Nevada Firearms Coalition.

Things that go boom

To the editor:

During the presidential debate on foreign policy, President Obama stated that our nation is secure. He arrogantly dismissed Mitt Romney by pointing out that we don't need more Navy ships because "we have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them."

The sad truth is that the target number for operational nuclear-powered aircraft carriers is a mere 11. The first such carrier was built 50 years ago. Due to budget restraints, only one other nuclear-powered carrier is scheduled for construction.

What the president did not tell us is that our enemies these things called tactical nuclear weapons that go boom and blow up our things that planes land on. Only 11 booms and our nuclear carriers are history.

Is that what our president calls security?

LARRY E. COLE

NORTH LAS VEGAS

No centrist

To the editor:

I have never seen an article in the Review-Journal more detached from reality than Sunday's commentary, "Obama foolishly forfeits the center." President Obama never has been, and never will be, anything even remotely resembling a centrist. Not in ideology, not in political tactics, not in respect for the values, traditions, and history of the United States and Western civilization. Only someone who is completely unaware of what Mr. Obama has done, said and written could possibly imagine him this way.

The president made it clear at the beginning of what hopefully is his only term that he openly despised his political opposition and had nothing but contempt for them and the traditional American values they represented. Yes, Republicans are generally for protecting human babies, avoiding trillion-dollar deficits, learning lessons from history and following the rule of law. If these beliefs are now considered "far-right" it's more of a reflection of how the country has changed than anything else.

And as for the two "signature achievements" of President Obama - health care and the stimulus - let's look at what they were intended to do. ObamaCare is designed, albeit in a clumsy and obvious way, to destroy the current medical system, leaving only government to step in and impose its will. The stimulus, which never had a chance to actually stimulate increased economic activity, was largely a raid on the treasury to pay off the Democratic political base.

There is no "center" to America anymore. We are very divided, and it looks like we will continue to elect people who intend to intensify and widen that divide.

James Moldenhauer

North Las Vegas

Walk the walk

To the editor:

Sen. Harry Reid's Friday car accident is his latest demonstration of his disregard of his own politics.

Why was he in a cavavan of four large SUVs? Why wasn't he driving a Chevy Volt or some other high-mileage car? Sen. Reid talks the energy conservation talk, but he sure doesn't walk the walk.

David Meredith

Henderson