Kids With Guns at the Library—Featuring Kyle Rittenhouse
Las Vegas Library District OK’D Reservation to Teenage Vigilante, Racist Gun Instructor, US Senator, Denied Progressives.
—Las Vegas, NV
A meeting of the library district board of trustees serving the Las Vegas Valley ended with one director in tears after a broad coalition of groups spoke against a seminar on concealed weapons featuring Kyle Rittenhouse. Originally called “Guns in the Library” (no, I’m not making that up), it was scheduled for May at the East Las Vegas branch and organized by Nephi Khaliki, a controversial local concealed-carry weapons (CCW) instructor.
Last year he rented library space and gave a presentation with racist tropes and even encouraged owners to aim at kids, specifically Black kids–and was attended by Republican elected officials.
This time the criticism came from the leadership of several organizations like the local chapter of the National Organization for Women, President Michelle Maese of SEIU Local 1107, and Executive Director Laura Martin of Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN), to name a few. Before this meeting, the library had clarified its position that as public buildings libraries are available to be rented by all. Laura Martin of PLAN reminded the trustees that her organization’s rental request some time ago for an event at that same library was denied.
After the denial, the library approved the reservation of an event featuring Senator Catherine Cortez Masto but PLAN was denied for being “partisan,” (it wasn’t) the library communicated to them. This highlights an obvious bias, though Martin did not use those words. The meeting ended with Trustee Kelly Benavidez seeming to hold back years, saying in a breaking voice, “As a mother and a Latina, I hear you.”
Afterward in the lobby, the instructor approached the group of mostly women and was heard saying “The only person that has the power to stop this event is me and you won't even talk with me. Can I have a hug?”
What’s Kyle Up to These Days?
Since his acquittal, Rittenhouse has been prevented from making several appearances across the country, including at a brewery in Texas in January. He enjoys a popular audience amongst some conservatives and groups of the white nationalist and domestic terrorism variety. Last year, Rittenhouse incorporated a limited liability corporation in Nevada to raise money to challenge media figures who have criticized his ludicrous actions of going to a racial justice protest and lethally shooting people.
Mother Jones reported his “Media Accountability Project” dissolved in under a year; that same month Kyle was slated to appear at a private event at a venue in the Venetian until resort management intervened. If a brewery in Texas and the Venetian (during a gun show) can cancel Kyle, why not the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District? The trustees' response to this latest Rittenhouse community appearance, as well as the toxic Khaliki, has been impotent at best.
Last year’s event at the Clark County branch received swift backlash and the elected officials in attendance denounced it, including then-assemblyman and candidate for Clark County sheriff, then-mayor of North Las Vegas and candidate for governor, and former Las Vegas councilwoman Michelle Fiore. Only afterward did the library condemn the hate speech–in typical corporate jargon as damage control.
This is not the same as preventing the very speech they condemned. Instead of the latter, they have thrown their hands. But not in defeat; rather, to help Khaliki and Kyle. It is an abject abdication of their responsibility.
“Guns at the Library”
(Jeri Burton, ED of NV NOW spoke about this initial event invitation during the meeting.)
LVCCLD took to Twitter in early March in an attempt at clearing up the narrative, stating the district is not at all a sponsor and guns are prohibited on library premises (also suggesting that carrying could be met with arrest). How is it that an event promoting “guns at the library” got approved by the very library that prohibits them? Details indicate the library may have been less “hands-off” in handling this event reservation than they have expressed, if not entirely disingenuous.
Khaliki has since communicated that Rittenhouse’s appearance has been canceled due to conflicts with his talent agent. The event page to purchase event tickets no longer includes images of kids wearing "guns in the library" shirts nor the featured guest announcement. The library collaborated with Khaliki to make the event less incendiary. Read that again: they collaborated with the racist–and denied the liberal group.
May’s event instaed sought to empower minorities by providing CCW instruction in multiple languages. But at last year’s event, minorities were encouraged to “shoot at [their own] children.” I’ll let you decide the level of hypocrisy on that one.
And what of Khaliki? Infamous for his “investigations” of an alleged conspiracy involving the former sheriff and now governor, Lombardo, as well as former governor Sisolak in the aftermath of the October 1 mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip. Last year he admitted his slides were racist and used the equal-opportunity racism defense, saying “I think racism is funny… People got equally roasted in my class at the library last Sunday.”
Condemning Hate Speech Not Enough
Imagine a Black family walking past Khaliki’s presentation where his attempt at humor encourages “safety lessons for Black gun owners” such as “shoot at small children.” Then Imagine Kyle Rittenhouse walking past that family who knows that he lethally shot people on the other side of a Black Lives Matter rally? If that family told the library district that it disrupted or impeded their access to library materials and services, how would they respond?
Would they tell the family the library does not condone hate speech, as it happens right before them?
“Not Talkin’ Bout” Hate Speech in the Library
If all people truly have the right to access public spaces and libraries, it is incongruent that hate speech and vile, anti-Black, discriminatory language within the library itself–as Khaliki has promoted–would allow for equal enjoyment.
After the largest social movement for racial and economic justice in our nation’s history during the summer of 2020, the LVCCLD signed on to the national Urban Libraries Council statement committing to transform barriers to social and racial equity, in part, “being forthright on tough issues that are important to our communities.” Earlier this month, LVCCLD executive director Kelvin Watson doubled down on the Kyle Rittenhouse event.
We Didn’t Cancel Drag Queen Storytime and We’re Not Cancelling Kyle
Astoundingly, speaking to KNPR he made a false, dangerous equivalence between the controversy of transphobic groups with guns menacingly harassing drag queen storytime events to giving a platform to an acquitted killer so he can talk about guns, saying, “the same way that we're not canceling this event, we certainly don't cancel those events either.” Instead, he goes on, they prepare by increasing their (armed) security guards and reaching out to LVMPD. Director, nobody is showing up with guns to protest Rittenhouse.
Having been lauded in his career for leading on issues of diversity and inclusion, Watson should know better than to try shuckin’-and-jivin’ to deflate criticism of racist hate speech under his watch. It seems that nobody with authority was interested in pushing back against a state-approved weapons instructor who drew laughter from a room of gun owners and politicians with jokes about shooting at kids to “hit a fellow gang member.”
The director says he thinks of his libraries as the last bastions of democracy. In what democracy is it a joke to shoot kids? Is it the one where killings by guns are the leading cause of death for kids–especially Black ones? Because that would be the United States of America, Mr. Watson.
The library can Tweet all it wants. When it comes to actually doing something, they helped the racist moderate his racism and showed their community that you can go to a protest and murder people in one of the most televised episodes in US history and then come hang out at their most diverse branch as if nothing happened.
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The library has not responded to requests to meet with trustees from the groups represented at public comment.