Vandals lucky we aren't really Nazis

Last week, Matthew Cole Martin, 18, admitted doing $5,000 in damage by spray painting racist and obscene slogans on walls around Carson Valley.

A second teenager faces charges in relation to the crime.

The people who are most affected by this aren't the races targeted, but the property owners who have to clean up the mess. As near as we can tell, the only thing the owners did was have a large blank wall.

Why take a spray can to a piece of private property? What gain was there? All Martin earned for his trouble is potential incarceration and having to pay restitution to the people whose property was damaged.

The vandals in this case look like they were on a joyride through the county and decided to leave their mark. What's a little frightening is that they drew on the material they knew best.

Painting swastikas and obscure skinhead references all over town isn't the equivalent of going out and beating up people of other races. But just as alcohol are a gateway to harder drugs, racist graffiti is a gateway for harder hate.

The ironic thing about whoever did this is that if they actually lived under the regime they espoused, they might find themselves in front of the wall instead of painting one.