8 minute read
Letters
from Oct. 27, 2016
Wild times
Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.
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We’re living in exciting times. The Chicago Cubs have a chance to win the World Series for the first time since 1908. The world’s best holiday, the one-two punch of Halloween and Nevada Day, is this weekend. And the world’s weirdest election is just around the corner. We’ve had a few readers, not to mention candidates themselves, ask us about our endorsements. We’ve run editorials articulating some our positions, and hopefully our ongoing series of election stories focused on some of the individual races has been helpful to readers trying to make decisions. We plan to run a full slate of endorsements soon, but it will be timed to help Election Day voters more than worm-eating early voters.
We timed our endorsements that way, in part, because we support voting on Election Day. We think voters deserve the chance to gather as much information as possible, which means the more time, the better.
For example, just a few weeks ago the ward one Reno City Council race seemed relatively civil. Then, all of a sudden—as if unexpectedly flush with cash from some unknown source—candidate Victor Salcido ramped up his attack ads. I mentioned these nasty ads in this column last week, and since then, it seems to have only gotten worse.
The Reno Gazette-Journal’s Anjeanette Damon recently did a nice job of debunking some of the misinformation being spewed by Salcido’s campaign, such as the claim that his opponent, incumbent Jenny Brekhus, took a pay raise while simultaneously laying off firefighters. That isn’t true, and many of the other complaints Salcido has leveled at Brekhus lack context or key information. Damon’s Oct. 25 piece is headlined “Salcido stretches the truth in campaign attack ads.”
We will publish our complete list of endorsements soon enough, but, needless to say, Victor Salcido won’t be among the candidates we support.
A cHECKered career
Re “Why is Joe Heck in the Army?” (cover story, Aug. 25):
First let me thank Mr. Heck for his service. But it seems to me that he has had a job as a general, a doctor, a congressmember, a small business owner, a volunteer. He may have even walked on water, and we just never heard about it. It looks to me like he has trouble holding down a job. To Heck with Heck!
Now as far as Hillary not wanting to shake hands with Donald, I don’t blame her—she doesn’t know where he has had them! And the reason that Donald sniffs all the time when he is talking is that he is trying to keep his nose from growing!
Jerry Wallis Reno
Western hospitality
Let me start off by saying that I am very excited to be in Reno and to make it my home. I recently moved here, but there are parts of the culture in Reno that I simply do not understand.
Maybe it’s because I come from a more diverse city. Maybe it’s because I am of a diverse background. However, I have found Reno to have a very strong racist overtone, which is quite odd as Reno can be a very transient city, due to the casinos, the university and the recent tech inflow.
I can walk into a restaurant, a business, or even a church and I am either gawked at, not served or addressed, or receive rude service. But the white patrons are immediately received. I even had a realtor tell me that an HOA that I recently moved into prefers that “you don’t leave car parts, and engines laying around everywhere.” It just seemed odd to hear such nonsubtle racism.
I am educated and worldly. I am a director at a reputable organization, and yet I have never felt so “picked on” for my race before. Does it happen to others too?
Gemini Devi Reno
Who’s paying for those NRA TV spots?
Re “The least we can do” (Left Foot Forward, Sept. 15):
I’d like to correct a few of Sheila Leslie’s assertions and insinuations in her essay concerning Question 1.
First, she feels threatened by the National Rifle Association’s checkbook, which is odd because the NRA does not buy votes with dollars. It instead mobilizes its nearly five million members to assert its positions at the ballot box. It is the NRA membership, a truly grassroots collective that frightens lawmakers, as is proper in a democracy. By contrast, Question 1 is largely funded by Everytown for Gun Safety, an astroturf organization financed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg. If it’s money that arouses Ms. Leslie’s ire, she’s supporting the wrong side.
Ms. Leslie then insists Question 1 includes “reasonable exceptions to temporary transfers of guns used for ... target shooting.” This is simply untrue. The text of the proposed law is explicit: Section 6.6(c) prohibits, for example, my employees, who have no guns of their own, from borrowing my own guns for casual target shooting in the desert, as they have done many times in the past. My people have never borrowed guns for self-defense, nor do they hunt, nor do they participate in organized competitions. They just like to take guns out to a range or to a desert and target shoot, like almost all other firearms enthusiasts. Question 1 prohibits this.
As is expected with a bill drafted by people who don’t own guns and don’t know anyone who owns guns, the proposed law has no provision for loaning guns to be used in precisely the manner most gun owners use their guns most of the time.
All this is beside the fact that Question 1 will not make us safer, it will not have any effect at all on violent crime. It won’t even make it more difficult for criminals to get their hands on guns. As with most gun controls, the proposal is based on the dubious proposition that a person who is willing to violate laws prohibiting robbery, assault and homicide will somehow be deterred by laws governing firearms transfers.
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Thursday, Nov. 3, 2016 | 7:30 p.m. Nightingale Concert Hall
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