Wednesday, June 20, 2018 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
View more of the Sun's opinion section
Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., struggled with his dancing skills at a recent Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce. When it came to the question of school safety, Heller pulled out the old two-step to dance around the question. Step 1: Touting his support for a measure to help keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. Step 2: Touting his support for an increase in federal grants available to schools for security measures.
The problem is that Heller stumbles on both steps. He gets off on the right foot by supporting the Fix NICS Act, but stumbles by not supporting the expansion of background checks. In other words, he supports beefing up the database for background checks but is against expanding the use of that database. Go figure.
Heller also stumbles on the second step of throwing money at schools for increasing security measures. Conservatives (especially in Nevada) have railed for years that throwing more money at schools does not automatically make students smarter. So why should we think throwing money at schools for security measures would make students safer?
Heller needs to stop dancing around issues and tell Nevadans what he really stands for. He needs to stand up and say he supports the National Rifle Association 100 percent and that he supports President Donald Trump and his policies. In politics, you dance with the people who brought you to the dance. So if you didn’t pay for the ticket, don’t expect to dance with Dean.
