VP's 'accident' should not have happened
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BY GREG JAMES*
GUEST COLUMNIST
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Monday, March 6, 2006
seattlepi.nwsource.com
In the aftermath of the vice president's hunting accident in Texas, most of the news media chose not to focus on the accident itself but on the way the event was handled and the timing of the news release. I can understand that. Hunting accidents are not ordinarily treated as crimes, and, while rare, they are a part of the sport.
However, as a bird hunter who has shot literally hundreds of quail, pheasant and grouse (all of which I consumed), I believe Dick Cheney got another one of those "free passes." The more I think about it, the more I believe that most people likely don't understand just how serious it is to shoot someone while bird hunting. Cheney violated the most important safety rule of gun handling, a rule pushed by the National Rifle Association and all major hunting and shooting sports groups: You never pull the trigger unless you're absolutely certain of the shot.
I'm sure the reason the vice president has not been more harshly criticized on the incident is because accidents do happen with guns and the non-hunting public probably doesn't understand the difference between an accident that can be excused and one that cannot.
There's a big distinction:
A man is hunting quail with friends. He's walking through thick brush flushing birds. Suddenly a rattlesnake buzzes at his feet. He jumps back instinctively, trips, drops his gun and it discharges, shooting his friend in the leg. This is an excusable accident. (These types of things do on occasion happen in hunting.)
On another hunting trip, the same man is hunting quail with friends, flushes a bird, tracks it with his shotgun and fires without making sure the shooting lane is open and the background clear. He hits a friend. This is inexcusable. It's reckless hunting, bad gun safety and, as stated earlier, violates the most basic rule of shooting and hunting.
Right after the story broke, it was mentioned that Cheney's victim re-entered the hunting group unannounced. This fact is totally irrelevant, because it has absolutely nothing to do with the basic rule of shooting and good safety practices in the field.
Cheney likely has escaped a lot of scrutiny and ridicule -- if you exclude the talk shows -- because hunters and gun owners are much more likely to be conservatives and Republicans and because most media types probably don't hunt and have no idea of just how unsafe and dangerous this incident shows him to be.
I have friends who will not hunt with certain people for safety lapses that are trivial compared with shooting someone in the face at 30 yards. (Just pointing an unloaded shotgun in the general direction of fellow hunters at a lot of hunt clubs can get you permanently "blacklisted" and branded as dangerous.)
That's the strange thing about this "accident." Everyone who has hunted upland game birds now knows Cheney is a guy you'd never go hunting with. Yet hunters have said little.
It seems to me this is classic Bush/Cheney stuff, and follows the usual pattern: Shoot first, deflect the blame and rely on a relatively uninformed public to not really understand how bad a blunder it really is.
*Greg James lives in Seattle.
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