Letters: Violence of laser tag game teaches the wrong lesson

I'm a new resident of Nevada (five months) so this is the first summer that I have had my children (ages 7 and 8) in the summer reading program.

The summer reading program offers incentives to children to inspire them to read during the summer months (i.e., free haircuts at Supercuts and lunch at McDonald's.) This is a wonderful program and it helped keep my children reading during the summer months. However, the last prize they received shocked and dismayed me.

As a final reward for completing the reading program, my young children received a free pass to "Ultrazone" to play laser tag. I feel that this is highly inappropriate considering the amount of drive-by shootings in Las Vegas and the highly publicized school shootings that have occurred around the country this year.

What are we teaching our children? Is it appropriate to encourage our children to point laser guns at each other and pull the trigger? Doesn't this desensitize them to violence? Aren't there other incentives that the library can offer children?

In the Las Vegas school system alone there have been more than 100 guns confiscated from children this year. We should be teaching our children that aggressive behavior is wrong, and you must agree with me that laser tag is a game of aggression.

This is an election year and I will be casting my votes for candidates who take strong positions against violence in the schools and support programs that have a positive, rather than a negative, effect on the children of Nevada.

Michael C. Rose

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