Where I Stand: Commission does right by horses

Thursday, April 18, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

"Kindness and compassion toward all living things is a mark of a civilized society. ... Only when we have become nonviolent toward all life will we have learned to live well ourselves."

--- Cesar Chavez

IT TOOK BARELY 10 minutes for the Clark County Commission to realize it should not give in to barbarians and banned horse tripping outright in the unincorporated areas of our county. Kindness and compassion won one.

An April 14 editorial in the Review-Journal called "Tripping out; no need for county ordinance," makes one wonder if the writers at the other paper aren't themselves tripping out. So worried are they that animal welfare people will in some way get a "foot in the door," they are willing to side with evil in order to protect some perceived status quo.

Our society has become frightening. Bands of amoral thugs threaten our very civilization. Separatists calling themselves patriots have taken to the forests to build bombs designed to wreak havoc on the federal government, decreeing our rights are being taken away. We are giving our rights away because as citizens we are not performing our duties which call upon us to be law abiding. Because of daily violence and mayhem wrought upon our lives, we are begging our lawmakers to do something to protect us.

The response from Washington is anti-terrorism laws, anti-gun laws, anti-anything laws that will make us a more civilized society. We are handing our representatives the keys to construct our prisons and make us less free. Yet, still we are becoming more violent as a society. What could we be doing wrong?

We are not teaching our children kindness and compassion for one thing. Hard to do when the parents are whacked on crack. Teachers in schools are doing yeoman's duty trying to get students just to sit still. Humane education is way down on the list of subjects to teach.

It becomes the jurisdiction and duty for our local elected officials to handle problems, case by case. And handle they did when our commissioners voted to ban horse tripping in the unincorporated areas of our county. North Las Vegas, Las Vegas and Henderson should follow suit.

You should have been there. It was a sight to see. State Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, rushed to the Clark County Government Center, which is magnificent, by the way, from the university, where she teaches, to speak on the issue.

Horse tripping has become an important issue for Titus. She tried to have legislation introduced in the last session of the Legislature, but her bill never made it out of the Natural Resource Committee. Sen. Dean Rhoads, chairman of that committee, allowed no hearings on the bill, probably for the same paranoid reasons the pundits at the Review-Journal have.

Titus, committed to ending this particular form of brutality, took another route. Banning the practice in Clark County was a large step toward a statewide ban. California, New Mexico and Arizona have outlawed the practice. Where is a horse tripper to go but Nevada, where cruelty laws are vague at best and apply to cats and dogs mostly?

In spite of the erroneous information put out by the R-J, horse tripping is happening at the charreadas in North Las Vegas. They are announced much the way dog and cock fights are, through word of mouth. Entrants to the events are searched for cameras or other implements of documentation. But human ingenuity being what it is, hidden cameras have recorded horse tripping. George Knapp did a moving commentary for KLAS Channel 8 on the subject and that was the video clip shown to the county commissioners, who sat in stunned silence.

Titus explained that the opposition to this ban had a "two-pronged approach." They tried to discredit any attempts to strengthen cruelty laws by claiming laws were already in place to protect animals. They also used the threat that such a ban would affect rodeos.

After viewing the horrendous video showing horses being roped while at full gallop by their front legs, flipping head over heels onto their necks, or the other form this "sport" takes wherein the horse is roped by its back leg while running, Commissioner Jay Bingham could barely speak. He began by saying he'd been around rodeos all his life, even participating in them, and horse tripping in no way resembles anything having to do with rodeos.

Commissioner Paul Christensen, appalled by what he saw, went on record as voting to ban this cruel, inhumane practice as did Commissioner Bruce Woodbury. Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates, wincing as she watched the video, said, "Trying to teach our kids how to love one another doesn't make sense having this kind of thing going on. ..."

In a unanimous vote for humanity, our commissioners moved Las Vegas forward toward a more civilized society.