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2006 Soap Box Archives Politics and Shotguns 03/27/06 Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent hunting accident set the mass media into a feeding frenzy as people who had probably never held a gun in their lives started weighing in a subject they know as much about as a flea knows about calculus. First of all, when you hunt birds you spread out across a field and walk in a line. Anybody who violates the process by getting ahead of the line is very apt to get a load of birdshot in his posterior. Unfortunately this happens all the time, people get shot, usually not fatally since the ammunition used for bird hunting is about the smallest made. I am certainly not defending the Vice President or anybody else for shooting somebody in the act of popping off at a bird. He should have been more careful, but the gentleman who got shot should have been more careful too. So in my estimation, part of the blame falls on his shoulders for getting in the line of fire, a definite no no when you’re on a bird hunt. Every kind of hunting has it’s own particular protocol whose primary concern is the safety of the hunters. This should be the very first thing a novice hunter should learn. It’s your responsibility to know where everybody is at any given time. Whether you’re shooting or simply walking, hunting is a heads up sport requiring the undivided attention of all participants at all times. I think Dick Cheney should have been more aware of where the other hunters were, but the other hunters should have been aware of where they were in relation to the field of fire, which in the case of bird hunting is anything from about 9:30 on the left to 2:30 on the right. To break that plane is dangerous. Bird hunting is a quick reaction kind of shooting. When a bird gets up in front of you, you have to raise your gun and shoot or the bird gets away. It was a most unfortunate accident but the way it was treated in the media, you would have thought that Cheney had fired the first shots of World War Three as the malice poured forth from the poison pens of Bush haters drenching the public with a deluge, a fine example of overkill in it’s purest form. The public for the most part just didn’t care. The man didn’t die, wasn’t even seriously hurt, came forward at a press conference and told the world so. Of course I can see why the media was so upset about his taking a while to report the accident. They had gotten so used to transparency and sterling honesty in the Clinton White House, since Bill owned up right away about the affair with Monica Lewinsky and Hillary turned over those billing records from Rose Law Firm right away. Pray for our troops. What do you think? God Bless America Charlie
Daniels
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