Jim Zumbo was never the equal as a writer, or nearly as famous, as some of the great men preceding him as editors at century-old Outdoor Life magazine. But he had a pretty good career going as an Outdoor writer, serving as Hunting Editor for Outdoor Life, appearing weekly on the Outdoor Channel, representing Remington, and publishing a long series of books and a host of magazine articles, until now.

All that success evidently went to Zumbo’s head, and he recently started throwing around censorious and intolerant opinions on his blog about the alleged lack of sportsmanship of long-range game shooting, and the inappropriateness of using semi-automatic rifles of military style for shooting varmints, like coyotes and prairie dogs.

on 2/5:

Long range shooting

While at the SHOT Show recently, I ran into a guy who complained that too many hunters were taking excessively long shots. He’s an outfitter, and witnessed plenty of people shooting at elk at distances greater than 350 yards. He suggested that that was too far, primary because the majority of those hunters had no clue of ballistics. Most were “Hail Mary” shots. I agree. We read about people making 500 yard shots and more, and that, to me, is ridiculous.

Then at the SCI convention last week, I talked to a guy who bragged that his custom gun kills deer out at 800 yards and better. To each his own, I suppose, but that isn’t hunting. It’s shooting. And I don’t care how great a marksman you are. The risk of wounding an animal at extremely long ranges is high, and where’s the sportsmanship, the ethics, the satisfaction of taking outrageously long shots? I understand there’s a group in PA that shoots deer at 1,000 yards and more. More power to them. Just don’t ask me to support that kind of “hunting.”

and on 2/16

(the url used to be: http://outdoorlife.blogs.com/zumbo/2007/02/assault_rifles_.html – but the post has since been removed.)

Assault Rifles For Hunters?

As I write this, I’m hunting coyotes in southeastern Wyoming with Eddie Stevenson, PR Manager for Remington Arms, Greg Dennison, who is senior research engineer for Remington, and several writers. We’re testing Remington’s brand new .17 cal Spitfire bullet on coyotes.

I must be living in a vacuum. The guides on our hunt tell me that the use of AR and AK rifles have a rapidly growing following among hunters, especially prairie dog hunters. I had no clue. Only once in my life have I ever seen anyone using one of these firearms.

I call them “assault” rifles, which may upset some people. Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity. I’ll go so far as to call them “terrorist” rifles. They tell me that some companies are producing assault rifles that are “tackdrivers.”

Sorry, folks, in my humble opinion, these things have no place in hunting. We don’t need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them, which is an obvious concern. I’ve always been comfortable with the statement that hunters don’t use assault rifles. We’ve always been proud of our “sporting firearms.”

This really has me concerned. As hunters, we don’t need the image of walking around the woods carrying one of these weapons. To most of the public, an assault rifle is a terrifying thing. Let’s divorce ourselves from them. I say game departments should ban them from the prairies and woods.

A bit over a week later, Outdoor Life has fired him, Remington has severed his corporate sponsorship ties, and the Outdoor Channel has reportedly dropped him.

Thw Washington Post is publishing tomorrow a shocked story on the Unforgiving Response from U.S. Gun Culture.

A firestorm of criticism swept Internet shooting sites, and Mr. Zumbo apologized very profusely 2/18:

I was wrong, BIG TIME
Someone once said that to err is human. I just erred, and made without question, the biggest blunder in my 42 years of writing hunting articles.

My blog inflamed legions of people I love most….. hunters and shooters. Obviously, when I wrote that blog, I activated my mouth before engaging my brain.

Let me explain the circumstances surrounding that blog. I was hunting coyotes, and after the hunt was over and being beat up by 60 mph winds all day, I was discussing hunting with one of the young guides. I was tired and exhausted, and I should have gone to bed early. When the guide told me that there was a “huge” following of hunters who use AR 15’s and similar weapons to hunt prairies dogs, I was amazed. At that point I wrote the blog, and never thought it through.

Now then, you might not believe what I have to say, but I hope you do. How is it that Zumbo, who has been hunting for more than 50 years, is totally ignorant about these types of guns. I don’t know. I shot one once at a target last year, and thought it was cool, but I never considered using one for hunting. I had absolutely no idea how vast the numbers of folks are who use them.

I never intended to be divisive, and I certainly believe in United we Stand, Divided we Fall. I’ve been an NRA member for 40 years, have attended 8 national NRA conventions in the last 10 years, and I’m an advisory board member for the United States Sportsmen’s Alliance which actively fights anti-hunters and animal rights groups for hunter’s rights.

What really bothers me are some of the unpatriotic comments leveled at me. I fly the flag 365 days a year in my front yard. Last year, through an essay contest, I hosted a soldier wounded in Iraq to a free hunt in Botswana. This year, through another essay contest, I’m taking two more soldiers on a free moose and elk hunt.

When I started blogging, I was told to write my thoughts, expressing my own opinion. The offensive blog I wrote was MY opinion, and no one else’s. None of the companies that I deal with share that opinion, nor were they aware of what I had written until this firestorm started.

Believe it or not, I’m your best friend if you’re a hunter or shooter, though it might not seem that way. I simply screwed up. And, to show that I’m sincere about this, I just talked to Ted Nugent, who everyone knows, and is a Board member of the NRA. Ted is extremely active with charities concerning our wounded military, and though he’s known as a bowhunter, Ted has no problem with AR 15’s and similar firearms. My sincerity stems from the fact that Ted and I are planning a hunt using AR 15’s. I intend to learn all I can about them, and again, I’m sorry for inserting my foot in my mouth.”

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All this is very sad, of course. No one likes to see this kind of career disaster befall even a semi-inadvertent victim. But… it is simply outrageous, when gun ownership rights are under continual attack by active enemies outside the sporting community, for someone occupying one of the most honored positions within the shooting sports, for the successor to Jack O’Connor himself, to be so obtuse as to lend aid and comfort to the enemy.

Of course, Field & Stream‘s David E. Petzal, in 1994, got away with endorsing the original Assault Weapons Ban (which he, however, did criticize for being too broad):

Gun owners — all gun owners — pay a heavy price for having to defend the availability of these weapons. The American public — and the gun-owning public; especially the gun-owning public — would be better off without the hardcore military arms, which puts the average sportsman in a real dilemma.”

I certainly felt back then that Field & Stream had no business employing a man with Petzal’s views as Shooting Editor, and I told them precisely that in the letter I sent canceling my subscription, which I had maintained continuously since the late 1950s.

Petzal is more careful today, but he actually has the chutzpah to deny that he endorsed the Assault Weapons Ban back in ’94.

I guess my personal position is that all this should have happened to David E. Petzal back in 1994, and then it wouldn’t be happening to Jim Zumbo today.

The Telegraph finally reaches the conclusion which has been obvious to many Americans all along: Gun control laws impact only law-abiding citizens. The criminal, who has already decided to commit robbery or murder, will hardly shrink from the footling addition of an additional charge of illegal gun possession.

For James Andre Smartt-Ford, 16, Michael Dosunmu, 15, and Billy Cox, 15, the hand-wringing by police and politicians over the escalation of gun crime comes a little late: all three have been shot dead in south London over the past 10 days…

We have… the toughest gun control laws in the world. They have actually proved strikingly ineffectual.

Gun crime has doubled since they were introduced. Young hoodlums are able to acquire handguns – either replica weapons that have been converted, or imports from eastern Europe – with ease. With no dedicated frontier police, our borders remain hopelessly porous. The only people currently incommoded by the firearms laws are legitimate holders of shotgun licences, who are subjected to the most onerous police checks.

… what a price we are paying.

Some naughty little middle school kid (a lot like me) in Joliet, in the conspicuously hoplophophic state of Illinois, brought a pellet-gun (a species of non-terribly-hazardous airgun) to school. Young Ryan Morgan (and an associate) learned of the presence of the contraband, and went and retrieved it from its cached location and turned it in to the authorities.

The same pettyfogging and nincompoop authorities gave Ryan the local Pavel Morozhov Award for Political Correctness, expelling him from school for a year on the basis of the school’s “zero tolerance” policy on the theory that he was technically “in possession” of the pellet gun.

Warner Todd Huston is shocked and appalled by the injustice, but I think there is a good lesson in all of this for young Ryan.

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A few years back, when I still lived in Newtown, Connecticut, that Northern Fairfield County community was subjected to a wave of terror in which hormonally-incited teenage males were shooting little holes in some windows with the same dreadful and awe-inspiring pellet guns.

The local forces of social uplift demanded condign action against the wielders of allegedly lethal instruments of destruction, and a new wave of legislation was in the works when I lodged a demurral in the local paper, pointing out that CO2-powered pellet guns were considerably less than lethal to life forms larger than squirrels. Someone prominent in the League of Women Vipers attempted to argue that airguns were dangerous to life. So, I issued a challenge, offering to provide a typical .22 caliber, CO2-cannister-powered airgun, and to stand at 25 feet (7.62 meters) facing my adversary, and allow her to shoot me anywhere she liked, provided I could wear eye protection.

If I died from my injuries, I would leave $500 to the charity of her choice. If I survived, she would be obliged to donate an equivalent sum to the National Rifle Association.

Curiously enough, the lady declined the wager.

Koochiching County (population 13,907) is located at the center of the northern end of Minnesota, bordering the wilderness of Northern Ontario. Its principal claim to fame is probably that county’s leading metropolis International Falls (population 6703) having been fictionalized in 1959 on television as “Frostbite Falls,” home of cartoon characters Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Indus Elementary & Secondary School, located 30 miles west of International Falls, has 194 pupils (79 elementary – 115 secondary) attending grades K through 12 from families residing in western Koochiching County.

I mention all this just to make clear the rural character of the setting of today’s headline news item.

The Associated Press yesterday evening ran the alarming headline: Principal quits after shooting kittens at school, followed by this lead:

A school principal has resigned and could face felony firearm charges after he shot and killed two orphaned kittens on school property last month.

That sounds absolutely terrible, of course. But the reality was rather different.

Principal Wade Pilloud, who resided weekdays in a mobile home on school property, had placed one or more traps underneath the trailer “to catch pests,” WCCO‘s version of the story reports.

Since the trap was large enough to kill an adult cat, Principal Pillaud was almost certainly using a conibear trap, rather than a leghold trap. Conibear traps are designed to kill the animal. A conibear trap large enough to kill a cat would have to have been set for something larger than a rat or a squirrel. Chances are that a skunk took up residence under Mr. Pillaud’s trailer, and he was taking action to remove a rather drastic problem.

Unfortunately, Mr. Pillaud discovered he had trapped a (presumably feral) female cat, whose death left orphaned a pair of young kittens. A cat-owner himself, Mr. Pillaud did not want the kittens to starve to death; so, after school, one night last month when all this happened, he took his shotgun, and “put them out of their misery,” as people say in the country.

But several children on the schoolgrounds for after hours activities heard the shooting, and went home and told their parents all about it.

This being the day and age it is, even in rural Northern Minnesota, you have nincompoops.

There were parents who felt, apparently some rather strongly, that there were concerns about the safety of their children,” said Joseph Flynn, an attorney for the South Koochiching/Rainy River School District. “The district’s position is that safety was not compromised.”

John Mastin, acting sheriff in Koochiching County, said Pilloud could be charged with felony possession of a firearm on school property and reckless discharge of a firearm, a misdemeanor.

County Attorney Jennifer Hasbargen said Friday that the case was under review.

Mastin said the shooting put no one in danger but said Pilloud used “poor discretion and poor timing,” especially amid the growing fear of gun violence in schools.

The district put Pilloud on administrative leave after the incident. Flynn said Pilloud agreed to an undisclosed settlement and resigned.

This type of incident demonstrates that nowhere in America is non-suburban enough today to assure the safety of gun-owners from the ritualized hoplophobia of journalists, politicians, and anti-weapons bigots. The NRA and other gun rights litigation centers need to intervene and contest every such case of the marginalizing of gun ownership and the stigmatization of the legitimate use of firearms. Otherwise, ultimately, a gun ban British and Australian-style is inevitable.

According to Special Rapporteur Barbara A. Frey (an ultra-liberal law professor at the University of Minnesota with a conspicuous feminist grievances bee in her bonnet), there is a human rights obligation requiring Gun Control, but no individual right to self defense.

Frey was given the assignment by the UN of preparing a comprehensive study on the “Human Rights Issue” of the “prevention of human rights violations committed with small arms and light weapons.”

The key portions of Frey’s Final Report state:

Article 2, paragraph 1, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights imposes positive obligations upon States parties to prevent acts by private persons that impair fundamental rights, including the right to life.

Minimum effective measures that States must adopt to comply with their due diligence obligations to prevent small arms violence must go beyond mere criminalization of acts of armed violence. States must also enforce a minimum licensing requirement designed to keep small arms out of the hands of persons who are most likely to misuse them. Other effective measures should also be enforced to protect the right to life, as suggested by the draft principles on the prevention of human rights violations committed with small arms that have been proposed by the Special Rapporteur.

Self-defence as an exemption to criminal responsibility, not a human right.

The measures which “core human rights obligations” require include:

a) The prohibition of civilian possession of weapons designed for military use (automatic and semi-automatic assault rifles, machine guns and light weapons);

(b) Organization and promotion of amnesties to encourage the retiring of weapons from active use;

(c) Requirement of marking and tracing information by manufacturers;

(d) Incorporation of a gender perspective in public awareness efforts to ensure that the special needs and human rights of women and children are met, especially in post-conflict situations.

Frey’s claim that “No international human right of self-defence is expressly set forth in the primary sources of international law: treaties, customary law, or general principles” fails to treat the entire history of Western philosophy and legal theory as a “primary source of international law.”

No man is supposed, at the making of a commonwealth, to have abandoned the defense of his life and his limbs, where the law cannot arrive time enough to his assistance.

–Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, XXVII, 1651.

Self-defense is nature’s oldest law.

–John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, I, 1682.

No man was ever yet so void of sense
As to debate the right of self-defense.

–Daniel Defoe, The True-Born Englishman, II, 1701.

But female law professors, well….

Hat tips to David Hardy, Glenn Reynolds, Richard Samuelson.

The American Rifleman, the NRA‘s traditional monthly magazine, has for many years run a featured called the Armed Citizen as a corrective to the MSM’s deliberate policy of avoiding coverage of the use of armed force by private citizens to stop crime.

It’s easy to see why.

Clayton Cramer catches USA Today inventing a non-existent tackle in a stabbing attack in Memphis halted by an armed citizen with handgun.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

Norm Mineta is resigning as Secretary of Transportation July 17th. Good! But not soon enough.

Under Mineta, the irrational prejudice against Americans defending themselves on air flights continued, and politically-correct safety measures reached levels previously unsurpassed. White-haired grannies were scrupulously searched in order to avoid ethnic profiling.

The Mineta regime’s rent-a-cop insanity reached its ultimate expression in 2002, when in Phoenix, 87-year-old WWII-hero and former governor of South Dakota Joe Foss was detained and had his Medal of Honor confiscated.

The corrupt United Nations, run by tinpot Third World dictatorships, is actively working (along with a number of prominent liberal international do-gooding organizations) to impose gun control on every country in the world, including the United States. Civilian disarmament resulting in governmental monopoly of force is a fundamental goal of leftwing statism.

A push for global gun control gets under way next week in New York City, when the United Nations opens a conference intended to curb the international arms trade.

Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) are pushing for a treaty to “protect civilians from armed violence.”

Those three groups — which have formed a coalition called the Control Arms Campaign — say their goal is to reduce arms proliferation and misuse — “and to convince governments to introduce global principles to regulate the transfers of weapons.” They are urging the United Nations to impose a “binding arms trade treaty.”

According to Amnesty International, nearly 2 billion people live in deep poverty, a problem made worse by the “uncontrolled proliferation of guns and other weapons that also fuels human rights abuses and escalates conflicts.” Amnesty International claims that weapons kill more 1,000 men, women, and children every day.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Amnesty International says on its website. The Control Arms Campaign believes a global Arms Trade Treaty is the solution.

But in the United States, defenders of the Second Amendment are insulted by what they see as a carefully timed assault on the U.S. Constitution.

They note that the U.N. Conference on Global Gun Control will run from July 26-July 7 — a time span that includes the Fourth of July, Independence Day.

The U.N. conference poses a direct threat to America’s constitutionally protected individual right to keep and bear arms, said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF).

Gottlieb, who plans to attend the U.N. conference, is urging the U.S. government to reconsider its financial support for the United Nations, given its effort to undermine the Second Amendment.

“Had it not been for our tradition of private firearms ownership, our citizens might still be subjects of the queen,” Gottlieb said in a press release.

“Had it not been for America, all of Europe might be speaking German. Were America not the ‘great arsenal of democracy’ that President Franklin D. Roosevelt described in 1940, the world would be a far different place, and the sanctimonious bureaucrats at the U.N. might instead be working in labor camps.”

Gottlieb finds it troubling that as the United States celebrates its 230th birthday, global anti-gunners “want to create a binding international agreement that could supersede our laws and Constitution.

“We have done much for the U.N., and in return, the organization has hosted despots, tyrants and dictators whose record of human rights abuses, aggression and genocide speaks for itself. And now comes an attack on our Constitution, on our national holiday.

“America has always answered the call to help our international friends and neighbors,” Gottlieb observed, “but when our very way of life is attacked, maybe it is time to find more worthy endeavors for our material and financial support.”

At the United Nations’ first small arms conference in 2001, the United States rejected the idea of global gun control.

John Bolton – the current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations – in 2001 was serving as U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control. He told the U.N. conference in 2001, “The United States believes that the responsible use of firearms is a legitimate aspect of national life.”

History professor Joyce Lee Malcolm discusses, in the Weekend edition of the Journal, the unwillingness of the British government to defend its subjects against crime rising comcomitantly with its determination to prevent their defending themselves.

With Great Britain now the world’s most violent developed country, the British government has hit upon a way to reduce the number of cases before the courts: Police have been instructed to let off with a caution burglars and those who admit responsibility for some 60 other crimes ranging from assault and arson to sex with an underage girl. That is, no jail time, no fine, no community service, no court appearance. It’s cheap, quick, saves time and money, and best of all the offenders won’t tax an already overcrowded jail system.

Not everyone will be treated so leniently. A new surveillance system promises to hunt down anyone exceeding the speed limit. Using excessive force against a burglar or mugger will earn you a conviction for assault or, if you seriously harm him, a long sentence. Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer jailed for killing one burglar and wounding another during the seventh break-in at his rural home, was denied parole because he posed a threat to burglars. The career burglar whom Mr. Martin wounded got out early.

Using a cap pistol, as an elderly woman did to scare off a gang of youths, will bring you to court for putting someone in fear. Recently, police tried to stop David Collinson from entering his burning home to rescue his asthmatic wife. He refused to obey and, brandishing a toy pistol, dashed into the blaze. Minutes later he returned with his wife and dog and apologized to the police. Not good enough. In April Mr. Collinson was sentenced to a year in prison for being aggressive towards the officers and brandishing the toy pistol. Still, at least he won’t be sharing his cell with an arsonist or thief.

How did things come to a pass where law-abiding citizens are treated as criminals and criminals as victims? A giant step was the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act, making it illegal to carry any article for an offensive purpose; any item carried for self-defense was automatically an offensive weapon and the carrier is guilty until proven innocent. At the time a parliamentarian protested that “The object of a weapon was to assist weakness to cope with strength and it is this ability that the bill was framed to destroy.” The government countered that the public should be discouraged “from going about with offensive weapons in their pockets; it is the duty of society to protect them.”

The trouble is that society cannot and does not protect them. Yet successive governments have insisted protection be left to the professionals, meanwhile banning all sorts of weapons, from firearms to chemical sprays. They hope to add toy or replica guns to the list along with kitchen knives with points. Other legislation has limited self-defense to what seems reasonable to a court much later.

Although British governments insist upon sole responsibility for protecting individuals, for ideological and economic reasons they have adopted a lenient approach toward offenders. Because prisons are expensive and don’t reform their residents, fewer offenders are incarcerated. Those who are get sharply reduced sentences, and serve just half of these. Still, with crime rates rising, prisons are overcrowded and additional jail space will not be available anytime soon. The public learned in April that among convicts released early to ease overcrowding were violent or sex offenders serving mandatory life sentences who were freed after as little as 15 months.

And the slackening of law enforcement continues to stimulate the Labour Government’s erosion of the ancient liberties which were always England’s pride.

…a host of actions have been initiated to bring about more convictions. At the end of its 2003 session Parliament repealed the 800-year-old guarantee against double jeopardy. Now anyone acquitted of a serious crime can be retried if “new and compelling evidence” is brought forward. Parliament tinkered with the definition of “new” to make that burden easier to meet. The test for “new” in these criminal cases, Lord Neill pointed out, will be lower than “is used habitually in civil cases. In a civil case, one would have to show that the new evidence was not reasonably available on the previous occasion. There is no such requirement here.”

Parliament was so excited by the benefits of chucking the ancient prohibition that it extended the repeal of double jeopardy from murder to cases of rape, manslaughter, kidnapping, drug-trafficking and some 20 other serious crimes. For good measure it made the new act retroactive. Henceforth, no one who has been, or will be, tried and acquitted of a serious crime can feel confident he will not be tried again, and again.

To make the prosecutor’s task still easier, he is now permitted to use hearsay evidence — goodbye to confronting witnesses — to introduce a defendant’s prior record, and the number of jury trials is to be reduced. Still, the government has helped the homeowner by sponsoring a law “to prevent homeowners being sued by intruders who injure themselves while breaking in.”

It may be crass to point out that the British people, stripped of their ability to protect themselves and of other ancient rights and left to the mercy of criminals, have gotten the worst of both worlds. Still, as one citizen, referring to the new policy of letting criminals off with a caution, suggested: “Perhaps it would be easier and safer for the honest citizens of the U.K. to move into the prisons and the criminals to be let out.”

Just last week, the BBC was reporting on the success of a “knife amnesty.”

The New York Times reports one of the more dubious psychological studies I’ve heard about to date, purportedly demonstrating that merely handling a gun increased aggressiveness. It seems actually to show that people who handle guns wind up preferring spicy foods.

The Telegraph supplies a story indicating just how marginalized firearms and hunting have become in Britain.

A deer hunter who took his photographs to a supermarket for processing was shocked to find himself reported to police.

Although the sport is legal, Tesco gave his details to officers who questioned him for several hours.

Last night the store was accused of “demonising” people who participate in field sports.

“Peter Williams”, who asked for his real name not to be published, said he was “made to feel like a terrorist”. Tesco has no ban on photographs of shooting and its privacy policy says: “We will never pass your personal data to anyone else”, but it contacted the police without telling Mr Williams.

Mr Williams, who is in his early thirties, from north Devon, took his film to Tesco in Barnstaple. Staff deemed photographs of him with his gun and a deer he had shot “inappropriate”, although he had broken no animal cruelty or firearms laws.

Mr Williams said that he was “utterly shocked and stunned” when two policemen arrived at his house on a Sunday morning with a set of prints given to them by Tesco.

After questioning him, the police accepted that he had a firearms certificate and had not broken any laws. Simon Hart, the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, which campaigns on rural issues, said: “This is one of the most disturbing and ridiculous examples of ignorance and demonisation, of which Tesco should be ashamed.”

Mr Williams asked the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC), of which he is a member, to demand an explanation from Tesco. Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco, replied that staff had acted appropriately: “On being asked to view the prints, our store’s management team decided that there was cause for concern and as such contacted the police.”

A second letter on behalf of Sir Terry said: “Tesco does not discriminate against any lawful section of the community… We are confident that the actions of our staff were… within the law.”

Last night a spokesman for Tesco said: “We are sorry for any upset or distress caused to the gentleman. However, if our staff are concerned about the content of photographic material it is right that they should seek advice from the appropriate authorities, in this instance, the police.”

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police said: “With any allegation of a possible criminal offence which is referred to the police, we have a duty to the community to make inquiries, particularly with any issues involving firearms.”

As eager to inflict political injury on the Vice President, as the typical bird dog is to pursue quail, the Washington Press Corps set to work today manufacturing a new headline story consisting of a violated right to know the details of the Vice President’s shooting accident sooner than they were released. These kinds of things are rather like tennis volleys: the Washington Post bats its new meme over the net, and the Times rushes in and delivers another bash. CNN picks it up, and smashes it over to MSNBC. And so on. The longer the ball stays in the air, the greater the reality and the significance, at least in the eyes of the MSM itself and its credulous devotees.

Michelle Malkin has been collecting coverage.

Despite the hoplophobic inclinations of the metrosexual community to regard Cheney as fatally branded as a “shooter,” what occurred this weekend was a private matter and an accident. It’s impossible for those of us who weren’t present to decide if we would have been able to avoid injuring Mr. Whittington had we been in the Vice President’s shoes. Shooting accidents commonly result from inexperience, carelessness, over-excitement, or inattention, but sometimes they also just happen.

My father was a careful and reliable sportsman. One day, when we went out, he decided, out of sentiment, to use an old 16 gauge German shotgun that a family friend had brought home as a war souvenir after WWII. That gun had travelled from one person to another as a family loaner for decades, and I used it myself many times when I was a boy without untoward event. This particular day, when my father loaded that shotgun’s two barrels, and closed the breech, both firing pins dropped, and both barrels discharged. Fortunately, no person or dog was standing in line with the muzzle of that gun, and though a nearby tree was riddled with shot, the muzzle was also mercifully far enough away from solid obstacles that the high velocity bird shot did not ricochet right back.

But my father and I were both seriously shaken by the near accident. We knew that it was pure luck the trigger mechanism happened to fail disastrously on that old gun without injury. We knew how close we came to tragedy, and we went home without hunting that day, feeling sick.

No one was responsible. It was an old gun. It had been subjected to amateur gunsmithing repairs by its actual owner, but all sorts of people (including both my father and me) had used it safely for years. Accidents can happen in the hunting field.

The reports of Dick Cheney’s accident suggest it too was not his fault. He swung on a rising bird, departing into a quarter he assumed was safe for firing. Mr. Whittington had apparently walked up from behind the Vice President and his shooting partner unobserved, and happened to walk into the Vice President’s line of fire. Mercifully, Cheney was using a relatively diminutive 28 gauge shotgun; and, it being a quail hunt, one expects he was firing low velocity light weight trap & field loads of 8 or 9 shot. Smaller bird shot will lose its energy over a shorter distance.

At the 30 yards the reports describe, even small bird shot is still dangerous, but shot that small at that range probably only just penetrated exposed skin. I’m sure it must have hurt though. Both Mr. Whittington and the Vice President have my sympathy. An accident of this kind is no joke for either the victim or the shooter, and the first is 78 years old, and the other has had a history of heart trouble.

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On the lighter side, as American history buffs at National Review, like Rick Brookhiser, have been noting: the last time an incumbent Vice President shot someone (11 July 1804), it was not an accident.