www.npri.org\/publications\/pub_detail.asp?id=922<\/a>.)<\/p>\nMr. Mendez is also waging a primary battle for the honor of taking on popular Democrat Steven Brooks in this fall\u2019s race for the State Assembly seat in District 17, north of Craig Road.<\/p>\n
Mendez, whose job with the Nevada Department of Prisons means he\u2019s a sworn peace officer, started taking courses at the college more than a year ago, aiming toward a degree in Criminal Justice.<\/p>\n
What he discovered there may have played a role in getting him interested in politics.<\/p>\n
Although Nevada is an \u201copen carry\u201d state, and peace officers frequently carry at least an \u201cankle gun\u201d in case of a emergency, Mr. Mendez quickly ascertained he was prohibited from carrying his handgun on the CSN campus.<\/p>\n
Mendez was told to talk to the chief of campus police, which he did — working his way up the bureaucratic maze from there.<\/p>\n
He was told his peace-officer status didn\u2019t exempt him from the college\u2019s supposedly \u201cstrict\u201d no-weapons policy. (In fact, I\u2019ve never seen such a policy \u201cstrict\u201d enough to require uniformed cops to leave their sidearms in their cars, despite the fact the Second and 14th amendments carve out for the police no more rights in this area than they allow you or me.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a correctional officer and as such, the need to defend myself at all times is greater than for the average citizen,\u201d Mendez told the April 20 meeting of the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis law is so prohibitive that without written permission I cannot leave my weapon secured in my vehicle in the parking lot of the campus, which leaves me defenseless on my way to and from school.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a correctional officer, I deal with a lot of troubled people: drug dealers, gang members, murderers,\u201d Mendez told the Nevada Journal. \u201cI\u2019m not just carrying a weapon for the sake of carrying one. My line of work opens itself to a lot of threats, and I constantly need to be on guard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevada Revised Statute 202.265 prohibits weapons on the property of schools but lists several exemptions, one of which is for a \u201cpeace officer.\u201d<\/p>\n
But CSN\u2019s weapons policy, cited in its employee handbook, simply ignores the \u201cPeace officer\u201d exemption, stating \u201cdangerous weapons, including handguns, are not permitted on campus without the express written approval of the President. This policy shall apply to all persons on the campus except law enforcement officers in the performance of their duties. …\u201d<\/p>\n
When Mendez got no help from CSN president Michael Richards, he contacted Andrea Anderson, his District 12 university Regent.<\/p>\n
\u201cMs. Anderson effectively told me I was wasting my time, because she agreed with the policy, and [I] wouldn\u2019t convince her to change it,\u201d Mendez said.<\/p>\n
Anderson told the Nevada Journal \u201cMy personal belief is the less guns on campus, the better.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hear this statement a lot, and I still can\u2019t make any sense of it.<\/p>\n
If a shooting breaks out on campus — as it did at Virginia Tech in 2007 (32 dead; 17 wounded) — or at a commercial establishment, as in the infamous 1991 massacre at the Luby\u2019s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas (23 dead, 20 wounded), the fewest possible number of guns that can be present — one — is the absolutely WORST possible scenario.<\/p>\n
Shootings at places like Appalachian School of Law (2002), the high school in Pearl, Mississippi (1997) or the New Life Church in Colorado Springs (2007) have been cut short, the number of victims held much lower, precisely because one or more armed \u201cgood guys\u201d were present to either shoot or hold the crazed assailant at gunpoint till backup arrived.<\/p>\n
But in the case of the 1991 Luby\u2019s Cafeteria massacre, Suzanne Gratia Hupp watched 35-year-old George Pierre Hennard murder both her parents — her mother as she cradled her dying husband\u2019s head in her lap — because she\u2019d left he own handgun outside in her car, as then required by state law.<\/p>\n
Again and again, disarming law-abiding citizens only leaves them defenseless in the face of a crazed killer, vastly INCREASING the death toll of innocent civilians.<\/p>\n
At the last legislative session, Nevada state Sen. John Lee, D-North Las Vegas, introduced SB 231, a bill that would have allowed individuals with concealed-carry permits to carry their weapons on state college campuses without seeking permission from the local college presidents.<\/p>\n
Lee\u2019s bill passed with bipartisan support in the Senate but was buried in committee in the Democratic Assembly. Needless to say, it was opposed by numerous traditional enemies of the Bill of Rights, including the UNLV Faculty Alliance.<\/p>\n
But even Sen. Lee\u2019s bill didn\u2019t go far enough.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no question here of private property owners deciding to bar gun owners from their premises. Especially on government property, the Second and 14th Amendments are the highest law of the land. All Nevadans are legally authorized by their state and federal Constitutions to carry their firearms in or on any public park, sidewalk, library, street or state college campus. And any legislator or judge who attempts to legislate, rule, or hold otherwise should be impeached and disbarred … for starters.<\/p>\n
# # #<\/p>\n
Things were looking up for local restaurateur Raj Patel last week, after both U.S. Sen. Dean Heller and his Democratic challenger, Congresswoman Shelley Berkley — not to mention state Sen. Barbara Cegavske, who may well be our newest congresswoman by winter — wrote to officials at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, assuring them Mr. Patel\u2019s plans to bring in two chefs from India on work visas (already OK\u2019d by U.S. Labor and Immigration officials, based on their findings that the chefs\u2019 presence would help create more than a dozen new local jobs) were on the up-and-up.<\/p>\n
But the embassy personnel proved intransigent.<\/p>\n
In an e-mail to one of Sen. Heller\u2019s staffers, Mr. Patel wrote last week: \u201cUnbelievable, both men denied visas and humiliated in the process.\u00ca…\u201d<\/p>\n
Apparently, the embassy staff accused the two chefs of having worked in this country while here on visitor visas. The great irony is that half the restaurant kitchens in Las Vegas probably employ illegal immigrants, with minimal interference from our local see-no-evil Immigration agents. But those illegals tend to hail from Mexico or Central America, of course, with which we share a large and porous border.<\/p>\n
If Raj Patel had in fact hired the men to work while here on their visitor visas, simply advising them to overstay those visas for a year or two — instead of sending them home to wait while he spent thousands of dollars applying for their work visas, doing everything \u201cby the book\u201d — they\u2019d probably be happily churning out chicken korma and lamb vindaloo in Las Vegas today, with no one the wiser.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday I was hoping to think how will I open (my) Thai restaurant, and what kind of interior improvements I need to make,\u201d wrote a disappointed Raj Patel on receipt of this latest news, last week. \u201cInstead I\u2019m faced with how to tell my current employees that I will be laying them off and\u00caprobably closing the restaurant and lose $350,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Later in the week, Raj Patel said his temporary chef has agreed to stay on at Saffron on Craig Road at least through the summer before returning to engineering school, though he can make no promises beyond that.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to talk with the interviewer and tell him my side of the story, but it seems impossible as they barricade themselves in the embassy. They have no one to answer to. …\u201d<\/p>\n
Patel is right. Embassy officials won\u2019t return my phone calls, either. (Yes, I waited till after 9 p.m. so as to call during business hours in New Delhi, ready with not just one but the names of three current officials in the visa office to ask for, starting with Counselor for Consular affairs James Herman and his subaltern, Josh Glazeroff. All were either absent or \u201cbusy.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u201cTilak (one of the chefs) had to take a bus 16 hours down to the embassy,\u201d Patel writes. \u201cHis bus had an accident on the way; luckily he was not injured like some others on the bus.\u00caNonetheless, he made it to New Delhi only to be turned down.\u00caHe was told not to waste his time and our time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some — more worldly than me, I guess — have suggested Raj Patel should simply have found a professional smuggler to have the men brought in through Mexico (Where? In the Yellow Pages?), or else contacted someone \u201cin the know\u201d in New Delhi to find out who to bribe to get the proper stamp on the already-issued work visas.<\/p>\n
Where there is no presumption of innocence, where there is no known course — however onerous — that can guarantee a happy result by \u201cfollowing the rules,\u201d what else would we expect many folks to try next?<\/p>\n
Is that what things have come to, with our embassy in New Delhi? Does anyone care? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I see where Kyle Gillis of the Nevada Journal posted a piece last week on the dogged fight of local prison guard Patrick Mendez against the dangerous hoplophobe policies of the College of Southern Nevada — until recently dubbed more appropriately the \u201cCommunity College of Southern Nevada.\u201d (www.npri.org\/publications\/pub_detail.asp?id=922.) Mr. Mendez is also waging a primary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,36,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2nd-amendment","category-about-town","category-nevada"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-gr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1020,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/1020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}