Next stop for IRS: Targeting gun owners

To the editor:

In light of recent events exposing the IRS’ special scrutiny of conservative applicants for nonprofit status, is it so much of a stretch to imagine them hip-deep in the gun control issue?

They’ve already amassed an impressive database of names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, annual incomes, number of dependents and occupations. Because they have to approve all applicants for 501(c) status, they now have a database of political donors to conservative causes and the membership lists of conservative organizations. Considering the arrogance of IRS officials who testified recently before the congressional committee, I wouldn’t put it past them to have already begun construction on a national database for registered gun owners.

Soon they will be able to determine which gun owners earn the highest income and target them for any test litigation. Or they can simply show up in our neighborhoods in some of those neat, black-armored troop carriers the Department of Homeland Security owns, and take our guns away.

Our Second Amendment rights have been under attack since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Many groups and individuals over the years have voiced their opposition to guns, and everyone on the planet is expected to think and act like those groups and individuals, who have demanded that guns be outlawed. But in a larger sense, the gun-control issue illustrates the main difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives think. Liberals feel.

Conservatives believe that Americans should stand on their own two feet and earn their own way, asking for nothing from the central government. Liberals feel that everyone would be happier if all the wealth in the country was gathered up and divided amongst the poor. After the IRS takes its bite, of course.

We must be ever vigilant, my friends, for they mean us harm. We must actively guard against any intrusion on our right to bear arms, and we must do so vociferously, legislatively and legally. We don’t wish to wake up one morning and find ourselves subjects of the Democratic Department of Homeland Security. I don’t know about you, but that just doesn’t feel right to me.

RICK AINSWORTH

HENDERSON

Seriously, Obama?

To the editor:

Earnest Bracey, you can’t possibly be serious (“It’s all about undermining President Obama,” Wednesday letter). Trying to defend the president when he himself can’t even do it?

We’ve got three big scandals going all at once, and Mr. Obama claims he “found out about it” from reading newspapers and watching TV. Are you kidding? This is absolutely the worst president and administration this nation has ever had. But that’s what you get when ignorant people vote. Didn’t you realize that Mr. Obama never held a job? Never ran a company? And you put him in charge of the most powerful country in the world? What a joke.

I’m sure if you think hard enough, you’ll be able to come up with a reason to blame George W. Bush, just like you do with everything else.

BOB RANFONE

LAS VEGAS

Water distribution

To the editor:

Your editorial about water allotments and some abuses is very appropriate in this time of drought (“Waste of water,” Wednesday). But I wonder if our water police are aware of the plantings by the new housing builders.

There are three new housing projects immediately west of our home, and we are amazed by the landscaping projects attached to their construction along the public roadways.

I don’t believe those plantings create edible produce for human consumption. At least the farms in the Imperial Valley of California help feed humans, though the Imperial Valley Irrigation District should stop its abuses.

Furthermore, all that water being used to irrigate the new plants is water unavailable for human use — and that’s not even including the water used on all the green plants and trees in the vaunted Green Valley in Henderson.

ESMAEL E. CANDELARIA

HENDERSON