Gee, the NRA's awfully quiet after Dick shot a dude in the face, huh?

[goodboy]

"crickets"

Where's Moses? Hey HESTON! You need to go pry that gun out of Dick's Cold Criminal Dipshit hands!

[punpirate]

1. Aw, just wait for it...

... Monday or Tuesday, they'll issue a statement saying that Cheney was using the wrong load for the game he was after. :)

[Nothing Without Hope]

2. They're waiting for the victim to heal enough for a perky photo-op

so he can join in the deafening "it's just a leetle accident and it was all the victim's fault and he's just fiiiiiine" chorus:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x400204
thread title (2-13-06 GD): A few things I've noticed about the shooting accident
Comment/excerpt: “First was the expected minimization of the incident and the downplaying of the wounds of a man who's still in intensive care. Most of these comments are from the ranch owner Katharine Armstrong, daughter of a former Halliburton director and professional Republican Pioneer bootlicker. … The true scope of Wittinton's injury is indicated in this Dallas Morning News article:
‘A friend who has talked to family members said that Mr. Whittington was hit by about 50 birdshot pellets. He underwent surgery Sunday morning to remove some of the pellets, and doctors have told his family that the shot apparently did not damage any major organs.’”

[malaise]

7. You might add

that none of Cheney,his medical and security entourage or the local police reported the shooting. CNN said a short while ago that Armstrong phoned a reporter at the Corpus Christie newspaper because she knew it would be (guess she meant that it would become)a big story.

[Raine]

3. Gee they are

strangely quiet on this one. :P

[goodboy]

4. what was it, a few days after Columbine:? (nt)

[ClayZ]

5. British soldiers beating Iraqi Boys, Cheney shooting people...

Tomorrow MSM will most likely have a new "Pretty White Girl Gone Missing".

[B Calm]

6. Don't blame the gun!! It was the crazed right-wing lunatic holding

the gun that shot someone!

[KharmaTrain]

8. No Love Between This Regime & The NRA These Days

For a regime that was promising to give the NRA an office in the Executive Office building, things sure have gone sour in recent years. It started with the Patriot act and then the failed Telcom Bill...two issues the NRA has some serious problems with and have been critical of this regime in both instances. In fact, they pretty much sat on their hands in the 2004 elections...definitely not coming out for boooshie boy like they had in 2000.

Regarding Heston...I haven't seen/heard any word about Chuckles for a while. He's suffering from Altzheiemers. No matter how much I didn't agree with the man when he was in charge of the NRA, and how Michael Moore made a major fool out of him in Bowling For Columbine, having gone through this disease with my mother, I sympathize with his family and the tough times they must have had in recent years. May his landing be peaceful.

Seems like the most outraged voices I've seen/heard so far have been from hunters...people who have a basic understanding of what went on here (far more than my knowledge). Be it the "caged shoot"...turning this into a carnage rather than a sport, or if there was alcohol used...there's a lot of questions that appears need answers.

While I'm no friend of the NRA, I'd cut them slack on this one...they've actually been on our side more often then not lately. With booshie boy playing around with the Constitution...and with total disregard for the 4th ammendemnent...there's not much stopping him from screwing around with the 2nd one as well...and they're watching that very closely.

[flordehinojos]

9. what is that NRA saying, guns don't kill--people do?

or something like that? i bet the hell like cheney is blaming the gun, not his sorry ass for what he did.

[Miz Milquetoast]

10. I don't know too much about them.

Does the NRA generally speak out when someone has a hunting accident? Where can I get this info? (surely the stats are SOMEWHERE).

I'm starting to think this happens more than I ever knew...

[benEzra]

19. Texas hunting accident stats, from the Houston Chronicle...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3654597.html

In 2004, Texas' 1 million-plus hunters were involved in 29 hunting-related accidents, four of which were fatal. The overall accident rate, 2.7 per 100,000 licenses sold, is the lowest since TPWD began keeping accident records in 1966, when the rate was 12.6. From 1999 to 2003, the accident rate was 4.02 per 100,000 licenses.

(snip)

Statistically in Texas, shotgunners tend to be involved in the most hunting accidents — 19 of the 29, or 65 percent, in 2004. That's because they typically are hunting in close proximity to others and shooting at low-flying, fast-moving targets. Their shotshells contain an average of 250-300 pellets (each barely the size of a pinhead for quail or dives) that scatter in an expanding, cone-shaped path after leaving the barrel.

Hunting accidents are extremely rare, even among shotgunners. Which makes this incident even wierder.

[REP]

11. Heston Has Alzheimer's; NRA is Recruiting on SF's Prop H

I personally think Prop H was a stupid and possibly unconstitutional move, but I'm not joining the NRA over it.

[B Calm]

12. Remember when Kerry went hunting? Now imagine if he had shot

someone...

[goodboy]

14. remember Columbine>? didn't take em long to get out there.

[benEzra]

17. That meeting was scheduled 2 years in advance...

and they canceled all events except the announced business meeting they were required by law to hold. The NRA got a bad rap on that one, but they canceled everything they legally could. And the story about them going to Flint right after a shooting was a fabrication, FWIW (they didn't).



FWIW, I suspect everyone at the NRA is probably smacking their heads and thinking "what an idiot" about the Cheney screwup. He appears to have violated at least two of the four fundamental rules of gun safety:

1. Always treat a firearm as if it is loaded.
2. Never point any firearm at anything you would not want to shoot.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire.
4. Always be sure of your target and know what is behind it.

I see gross violations of Rules 2 and 4, along with bad situational awareness in general.

[Hubert Flottz]

13. Too bad Ted wasn't hunting with the Dickster.

Bow hunting!

[JNelson6563]

15. They're planning the rally!

You know the drill, tragic shooting, time for a rally! :toast:

[MrBenchley]

21. Look what the gun lobby's pushing in Cheney's Wyoming....

"Wyoming hunters could carry automatic weapons and guns equipped with silencers in the field under proposed legislation that would also allow archery hunters to carry firearms.
Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, is the primary sponsor of the bill. "

http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2006/02/09/news/wyoming/c46741f0be7fa75187257110006178c1.txt

[MiniMe]

16. New Slogan: Guns don't kill people, Cheney kills people nt

[Justpat]

18. Truer words were never spoken, MiniMe.

[MrBenchley]

20. Cheney was the NRA's keynote speaker in 2004

No suprise that the most gun-crazy administration in history. the one that had the NRA boasting they were going to be working out of the White House, has a shooting.

[benEzra]

22. Shooting Based on Faulty Intelligence, Cheney Says...

Somebody posted this on the High Road:

CHENEY SAYS SHOOTING OF FELLOW HUNTER WAS BASED ON FAULTY INTELLIGENCE Believed Shooting Victim Was Zawahiri, Veep Says

Vice President Dick Cheney revealed today that he shot a fellow hunter while on a quail hunting trip over the weekend because he believed the man was the fugitive terror mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Mr. Cheney acknowledged that the man he sprayed with pellets on Saturday was not al-Zawahiri but rather Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old millionaire lawyer from Austin, blaming the mix-up on "faulty intelligence."

"I believed I had credible intelligence that al-Zawahiri had infiltrated my hunting party in disguise with the intent of spraying me with pellets," Mr. Cheney told reporters. "Only after I shot Harry in the face and he shouted 'Cheney, you bastard' did I realize that this intelligence was faulty."

Moments after Mr. Cheney's assault on Mr. Whittington, Mr. al-Zawahiri appeared in a new videotape broadcast on al-Jazeera to announce that he was uninjured in the vice president's attack because, in his words, "I was in Pakistan."

An aide to the vice president said he believed that the American people would believe Mr. Cheney's version of events, but added, "If he was going to shoot any of his cronies right now it's a shame it wasn't Jack Abramoff."

At the White House, President George W. Bush defended his vice president's shooting of a fellow hunter, saying that the attack sent "a strong message to terrorists everywhere."

"The message is, if Dick Cheney is willing to shoot an innocent American citizen at point-blank range, imagine what he'll do to you," Mr. Bush said.

[goodboy]

23. it was AL-QUAIL-DA, or Zarquailwi