Dick Cheney, Great White Hunter
Well, you didn't think I was going to let this pass without comment, didja?
Look, anybody can make a mistake...but I'm with ReddHedd on this one--the official accounts don't make much sense. Either somebody's lying or Cheney needs a gun safety course in the worst possible way, or both. The accounts make it sound like Cheney took a blind shot. But that's basically the stupidest thing one can do while hunting.
When I first heard this story I started imagining what the right would be saying if a liberal had done something like this. Then I remembered this. Note that Gore is carrying a full pack, and fiddling either with the sling or with the front swivel. Note also that there's no magazine in the rifle. Now, I'm basically a freak about gun safety, and there's no doubt about it, Gore's doing what he's doing in a radically sub-optimal manner. But I don't know what the conditions were like when this picture was taken, and I can certainly imagine conditions under which one would have to do something like this. If it's really important to fix your gun, you take out the magazine, clear the chamber, and do what you have to do. I've never had to worry about people shooting at me, so I've always had the luxury of being scrupulous about such things. I don't want to make too many excuses here, but this picture didn't justify the frenzy of Gore-bashing it produced.
Note also that the accompanying commentary by Matt Maggio is as uncharitable as it could possibly be--but that's par for the course when the right talks about Gore. For example Maggio claims that Gore is violating "two of the main rules of gun safety --never point a gun at anything you're not willing to kill, and always assume any gun is loaded." Thing is, those are really the same rule. They both mean "watch where you point that thing because it might go off." (Nobody really thinks that you should always assume that your gun is loaded. Otherwise they would think that you shouldn't check to see whether it's loaded when you go into a gun fight.)
Anyway, let's see whether the right is half as hard on Cheney about this infinitely more serious breach of firearm safety.
Well, you didn't think I was going to let this pass without comment, didja?
Look, anybody can make a mistake...but I'm with ReddHedd on this one--the official accounts don't make much sense. Either somebody's lying or Cheney needs a gun safety course in the worst possible way, or both. The accounts make it sound like Cheney took a blind shot. But that's basically the stupidest thing one can do while hunting.
When I first heard this story I started imagining what the right would be saying if a liberal had done something like this. Then I remembered this. Note that Gore is carrying a full pack, and fiddling either with the sling or with the front swivel. Note also that there's no magazine in the rifle. Now, I'm basically a freak about gun safety, and there's no doubt about it, Gore's doing what he's doing in a radically sub-optimal manner. But I don't know what the conditions were like when this picture was taken, and I can certainly imagine conditions under which one would have to do something like this. If it's really important to fix your gun, you take out the magazine, clear the chamber, and do what you have to do. I've never had to worry about people shooting at me, so I've always had the luxury of being scrupulous about such things. I don't want to make too many excuses here, but this picture didn't justify the frenzy of Gore-bashing it produced.
Note also that the accompanying commentary by Matt Maggio is as uncharitable as it could possibly be--but that's par for the course when the right talks about Gore. For example Maggio claims that Gore is violating "two of the main rules of gun safety --never point a gun at anything you're not willing to kill, and always assume any gun is loaded." Thing is, those are really the same rule. They both mean "watch where you point that thing because it might go off." (Nobody really thinks that you should always assume that your gun is loaded. Otherwise they would think that you shouldn't check to see whether it's loaded when you go into a gun fight.)
Anyway, let's see whether the right is half as hard on Cheney about this infinitely more serious breach of firearm safety.
posted by Winston Smith at
5:46 PM
5 Comments:
I actually checked your blog multiple times today anticipating this, though I thought the headline would say something about "Darth Cheney". At our staff meeting this morning, the Republicans in the room were jabbing at the Democrats about something or other, and one of the Democrats says, "Well, at least we don't go around shooting people." Maybe you had to be there, but I'm still laughing about it.
Hehe. According to "reporter"/columnist Dana Milbank, "during a 2002 Senate primary, [Bob Barr] accidentally fired a pistol at a campaign event."
He's all yours now. Thanks are unnecessary.
So Bob Barr is a "liberal" now because he opposes unlimited presidential power? Isn't that supposed to be a defining trait of conservatism? Glenn Greenwald's "Cult of Bush" thesis just keeps getting confirmed.
I think it should be pointed out that what Cheney does to those quail doesn't really qualify as "hunting": the birds are pen-raised, wingless, for the specific purpose of being shot by lazy millionaires, who simply walk up to them an blow them away by the hundreds in a single outing. Anything that might be considered noble about hunting is cut out of this practice, leaving the simple act of shooting a lot of small animals.
That's not hunting, it's killing.
Yeah, Bob Barr's ours, right!
Someday, the deficit will be ours (again!) to fix, the disastrous foreign policy will be ours to fix, the response to natural disasters will be ours to do well, the economy will be ours to make work for everyone not just the top 1%, and the Constitution will be ours to actually preserve, protect, and defend, as one of us will swear in taking the oath of office.
The Democrats are the party of personal - and civic - responsibility. Get used to it.
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