Very true. Accidental fatalities from firearms are tiny compared to other activities/hobbies.
Excellent source for TONS of firearms info, and from very good sources:
Click on link.
Posted on 02/12/2006 12:46:46 PM PST by bayourant
Edited on 02/12/2006 2:10:43 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.
Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.
Armstrong said Whittington was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
Whittington was in stable condition Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.
Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president was with Whittington, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, and his wife at the hospital on Sunday afternoon.
Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shot at a covey of quail late afternoon on Saturday.
Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and found a second covey.
Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong told the Associated Press in an interview.
"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."
The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
She said Whittington was bleeding but not very seriously injured, and Cheney was very apologetic.
"It broke the skin," she said. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."
She said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington, holding his face and cleaning up the blood.
"Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."
Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year. She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together.
"This is something that happens from time to time. You now, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.
___
Associated Press writer Paul Weber in Dallas contributed to this report.
FYI...NBC just interrupted Olympic coverage with a report of Cheney's shooting of Harry Worthington...
Ah, thanks. Katharine Armstrong was on the hunt. I accidentally said Anne Armstrong, her mother. She's more familiar.
Actually, the guy went to get a bird. Cheney and the other hunter had moved on to the next covey.
At which point the peppered hunter walked up on Cheney and the other, IN THEIR LINE OF HUNTING FIRE AREA, WITH OUT ANNOUNCING HE WAS WALKING UP ON THEM.
The injury IS light.
I have actually been rained on before. Their bird hunting. Its a light load ammo.
When he was twelve, he accidentally shot dead in his own house a sixteen-yearold girl, who was his sister’s closest friend and a distant cousin of them both.
I think it was probably in Kenedy County, not Nueces. Maybe Kleberg County, but I believe that ranch is in Kenedy County, south of there.
" Man I love photo-ops that make me look commanding."
Bees! What bees?
I'd like to see him try to preach that in Georgia.
I haven't used paper wads in over 40 years.
I can see the NY Times headline now:
"Sources: White House knew of risk of allowing Cheney to use a shotgun." An Administration source has confirmed to The Times that internal Administration studies have shown there is a great risk of an accidental shootings when hunting. The Administration ignored these alarming studies.
Same here, although not hard enough to get knocked down.Obviously, the VP was not being careless as you described so well. I come from a family of hunters. Stuff happens, even when things are done perfectly.
Yep, I know exactly. Come September each year, my Brittany got locked up or was never out of our sight. My DH was absolutely paranoid about it, but I hadn't experienced having a hunting dog stolen before, so I wasn't quite as hyper as he was.
It made him mad because I took her everywhere in the car with me, then would leave her in it when I ran inside to pick up whatever (not on hot days, not for very long, always with a window cracked) -- he was certain she was being stalked by those with an eye for "bird dog quality" and that I was just inviting unwanted attention. It was like she was a little beauty pageant winner!
She was never stolen, BTW. If she had been, I think the dognappers would've been sorry--she would've lit into them pretty fiercely, I think
Seems like we're watching a partisan "beehive" metaphor. A bunch of self-appointed drones buzzing around the Queen Bee, to offer their stingerless defense of the Queen's Challenged Honor.
"but you know how long the MSM will belabor this minor event, in which the Vice President was NOT at fault."You don't hunt, do you? I assure you, Cheney knows it was his fault.
We see it more and more, lately, and it's not limited to any particular party. We are beoming an intensely partisan sociey, with "Party Loyalty" being valued above all else, to the point that it is equated with patriotism and love of country.
It's sad, it's scary, and sometimes -- as we see in this thread -- it's even comical, in a twisted kind of way. (The incredible convolutions that are offered up in defense of the Queen Bee, to "prove" that the victim was at fault, because the underlying premise -- the immutable rule of politics -- is that the Queen can do NO wrong. So, if "wrong" does transpire, it's obviously either "someone else's fault", or, "no one's fault".)
Yes, comical. But moreso, chilling, when one examines the historical record of cultures that have opted to go down that road.
You make me sick.
In a good way, of course. LOL!
That photo is priceless!
rolling eyes
Do you reload?
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