Yep. Then you argue:
Posted on 02/13/2006 10:38:19 AM PST by SirLinksalot
How Did Dick Cheney Break the No.1 Rule of Hunting?
For veteran sportsmen like the vice president, safety is a core value
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER/WASHINGTON
The cardinal rule of hunting could not be more simple: Don’t shoot the people (or the dogs). If there’s anyone in Washington who knows this, one would have thought it would be Vice President Dick Cheney, who accidentally shot his friend and fellow hunter Harry Whittington, 78, late Saturday afternoon. Whittington is expected to recover from his injuries, but the question will linger on: how does an accident like this happen among hunters with so much experience?
For years, Cheney's take-charge public image has been bolstered by photos of him fly fishing in Wyoming and stories about Cheney jetting into hunting hotspots for quail, pheasant and other game. While serving as a congressman from Wyoming — before President Bush’s father tapped him for secretary of defense in 1989 — Cheney was a solid ally of the National Rifle Association, the staunch defender of gun rights, which also preaches gun safety.
Cheney frequently hunts ducks in Arkansas, Texas and South Dakota. His hunting career had been relatively smooth until controversy arose after he was reported to have taken conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia hunting in Louisiana in 2004, just after the Court had agreed to hear a case involving the secrecy of documents related to the Vice President’s 2001 work heading an energy task force. (Cheney was in favor of keeping them secret.)
Cheney also drew attention for reportedly shooting ducks and some 70 pen-raised pheasants at the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in southwestern Pennsylvania in December 2003. Experts were quoted at the time as saying there’s nothing wrong, legally at least, with blasting away at stocked birds. But depending on how and when they are released, it should not be confused with actual hunting, since disoriented birds placed in the field or released in front of the shooters are often neither as wary or elusive as wild quarry.
An eyewitness account reported by the Associated Press suggests that Cheney may have, in the heat of the moment, violated the No. 1 rule of hunting by failing to keep track of his hunting buddies at all times. The AP quoted the ranch's owner saying that Cheney could easily have failed to see Whittington, as the latter walked up behind the Vice President from lower ground and in tall grass. To be sure, safety should be paramount for everyone in a hunting party and some responsibility would have fallen to Whittington to make sure his fellow hunters knew he might be just out of sight behind them. But for the shooter, hunting safety dictates that focusing on the target should never be more important than keeping in mind what's behind it.
Accidents can happen, of course, in a single careless moment. Quail, when you find them and they flush, don’t exactly follow gun-safety rules. They fly up suddenly and may go in any direction. And the first thing that happens to the hunter is the adrenaline rush. That’s why quail hunters wear orange, as Cheney's group reportedly were. And that’s why experts counsel the hunter not to sweep the shotgun around and fire if they don’t know what’s in the line of fire. Knowing what's behind the target is also a rule with which, one can bet, Cheney’s Secret Service detail would have wanted Whittington himself to be intimate.
What probably spared Whittington more critical injury was the tiny size of birdshot being used on the hunt; quail are typically hunted with No. 8 shot, which is even smaller than BBs. After the accident, Whittington's face "looks like chicken pox, kind of. He's so lucky, it's a miracle," Whittington's daughter Sally told the Dallas Morning News. Cheney visited Whittington in the hospital the next day. The vice president "feels so bad," said Sally Whittington. "He's a very accomplished hunter. He was obviously relieved to see how well my father was doing."
If Cheney now finds himself criticized or lampooned, he'll ironically be in the same position he himself put Senator John Kerry in during the final days of the 2004 Presidential campaign, though the circumstances then did not involve a potentially deadly accident. At the time, Cheney used his widely-known experience as a hunter to mock a duck-hunting foray in Ohio in which Senator John Kerry ended up shooting a goose. "The senator who gets a grade of 'F' from the National Rifle Association went hunting this morning," Cheney reportedly said, to hoots. "I understand he bought a new camouflage jacket for the occasion, which did make me wonder how regularly he does go goose hunting.” As the Texas incident shows, experience does not make hunters immune to accidents, which is why hunting advocacy groups put such a relentless focus on safety as the top priority.
Last I checked, Al Gore's poor gun safety practices did not result in the injury of someone else.
So why do we rip into Al Gore's poor gun safety but apologize for Cheney's?
It happens. Target fixation is a problem in all shooting sports. We participate in a dangerous sport while accepting the risk and despite the risk.
I was joking.
Given some of the attempts here to downplay Cheney's poor hunting safety on the web's premier firearms website, I'd say there is plenty of irony to go around here.
One of my hunting partners witnessed a trajic accident and became a safety fanatic. Unfortunately, he could not see me for the thick brush and I got a load of #7 1/2 shot in the butt. My mistake was in wandering out of sight so he did not know where I was.
Written by someone that never hunted.
One of my hunting partners witnessed a trajic accident and became a safety fanatic. Unfortunately, he could not see me for the thick brush and I got a load of #7 1/2 shot in the butt. My mistake was in wandering out of sight so he did not know where I was.
Unfortunately, some folks saying the same thing on FR are not.
The owner of the property said that Whittington was heading out to join up with the hunting party (so wasn't "with" the hunting party). She also said he was hit from a range of about 30 yards. In tall grass and brush that's quite a ways to be seen and heard.
Of course as a shooter you need to always be aware of what's around you, so perhaps this is no excuse. But, it does change my perception of the accident quite a bit.
The rule about lawyers is this:
They aren't supposed to get up.
Its kinda like that joke: Whats the saddest thing on the face of the earth? A bus full of lawyers going over a cliff. . . . . .
With one empty seat! ! ! !
I think the technical name for it is "accident"!!
The shooter is responsible for where his shot goes. There is never an excuse for accidentally shooting someone. Having said all that, shooting one lawyer is a good first step.
Since it is so obvious with regard to the shooter, I don't need for you to answer that one.
Also, for any contention that the 'shootee' did something wrong, can you point me to your source for the factual basis?
Finally, for any contention that the 'shootee' did something wrong, please advise whether any such wrongdoing caused the VP to pull the trigger with a man in front of his shotgun.
Yep. Then you argue:
Sometimes accidents just happen. We have somehow, over the last few years (or decades) lost sight of that fact. Now, someone always has to be at fault.
We have a winner. Who will probably be flamed for being correct.
If you pull the trigger of a shotgun and there is someone in front of your shotgun that you don't intend to shoot, it is your fault. Period.
Did he hit the quail?
Actually he got a twofer. A quail AND a lawyer!
 the question will linger on: how does an accident like this happen among hunters with so much experience? If this question was posed as: "how does an incident like this happen among hunters with so much experience?" ... then it would be a question in search of an answer, however, it wasn't worded this way and the question actually has the answer embedded within itself. The use of the term ACCIDENT is the answer period. |
If you look you'll see the explanation all over the thread. Now I'm remembering something I read about arguing with fools and shutting up.
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