Correct. It’s entirely plausible that someone got shot in the neck strictly through safe gun practices. For example, Whittington could have unexpectedly taken flight, and looked much like a quail in that moment.
It’s okay, but it loses something without the more modern gun held sideways badass pose. Of course, if you picture the secret service agents as Sam Jackson and John Travolta…
Just heard on the news, Whittington will be getting a purple heart for injuries recieved during the war on terror.
I’m not a hunter. I’m also not anti-hunting. I roomed with hunters in college in Missouri, and for most of them I had a great deal of respect.
I just don’t think that anything that might involve the phrase “Pull over. I think I saw something!” qualifies as respectable hunting.
Oh, and Moto? Such a desparate and shameless partisan tu quoque effort? Pathetic. You are a sad, sad little man.
Let’s work with that for a moment. To save my typing fingers, let’s call them W and C. C is looking for prey in the brush. W comes up behind C unannounced. Birds get flushed out behind W, and C spins around and aims, following the path of the birds. He pulls the trigger just as the muzzle is pointed at W. What I wonder is shouldn’t C’s periperal vision have alerted him to the presence of W? Even looking down your sight, can’t you still see somewhat to the sides? And shouldn’t W have seen C move his gun to follow the birds behind him, and ducked out of the way? I think both are at fault.
I’m just glad that W is ok and we can joke about this. I bet that Leno and Letterman called their writers in for emergency overtime yesterday.
I first heard a garbled version of the story from a co-worker and got an image of Cheney blasting away at Dan Quayle.
And no, I don’t think it has any bearing on Cheney’s fitness, or lack thereof, to occupy the position he currently holds.
It is, however, comedy gold. And I will be using it to mock the man for quite some time to come.
It could have been worse:
“Well, Bill Clinton shot Monica in the throat…”
Don’t be giving them any ideas!
I believe Alexander Hamilton set the precident.
Let’s hang with that a moment, shall we?
I linked above to a statement by Jim and Sarah Brady, who obviously are trying to make some political hay out of this accident.
Do you find that statement unseemly in any way?
I was referring to your attempt to equate this incident with an accident involving a 12 year old boy. If you are trying to distract from your distraction with another tangent, I would suggest that you nut up and acknowledge that your attempt to link this to Adlai Stevenson was out of line. After that I will address your new concerns about Jim and Sarah Brady. I suspect, however, that in your desperate attempt to find some partisan nonsense that does get some traction, you’ll have some other unrelated anecdote before I even hit submit.
Well you guys really sucked the fun out of this story.
Deadeye Dick Cheney
Huntin’ with him’s just insane-y
They let him draw up the plan
To invade Iran
When the plans got back
We were in Iraq
Don’t ever mess with
Deadeye Dick Cheney
I believe that was Mr. Moto’s intent.
See post above for a refreshing antidote!
How about this, then - the YTMNDers are on it already! (Warning, Sound!)
For the unitiated, hunting quail in many parts of the country do involve vehicles, whether it’s a horse drawn wagon or a Suburban. The terrain and the distance between optimum cover to flush a covey of quail could be hundreds of yards, and a quail hunt could easily cover 5-6 miles of land. The point is to get to the area were the quail has gone to ground. The hunting party disembarks and spreads out, usually about 20-30 yard interval between hunter. The dogs point or flush the birds upon command. Quail fly fast and low and most are taken within 20 to 30 yards range of the hunter. Expert upland bird hunter’s use 20 and 28 gauge at which 30 yards is the about the maximum effective range to bring down the bird.
A good guess as to the load he fired was 28 gauge quail load in number 6 shot, of which there would be approximately 100 pellets. By comparison, a 12 gauge quail load in 7 shot would have approximately 380 pellets and delivered at 200-300 more feet per second. If Mr. Whittington was hit with the latter as he was in the face and chest, he would be dead or critically wounded. If he was shot with buckshot(00 designation, which is 9 32. caliber sized pellets, max effective range of 75 yards) at a range of 25 yards, he would have been dead before he hit the ground.
Both Mr. Whittington and the VP are guilty of bad hunting practices, Mr. Whittington paying the price by getting shot, the VP by national humiliation and probably the least of which he will pay a (relatively speaking) heavy fine of $1000 or more, if the Texas game warden of that area wishes to pursue it.
Oh, other celebrity shootings of note, Greg Lemond was accidently shot by his brother (father?) in law and recovered enough to win his second or third Tour de France (he still has pellets embedded in him), and Bobby Knight (ex-Indiana coach, now Texas Tech b-ball coach) shot one of his hunting companions during a dove hunt just a few years ago. IIRC, neither shooter was fined or prosecuted.
Is it true that the penalty for shooting a lawyer in Texas is … free beer?
What, this?
I don’t see anything “unseemly” about these comments, they’re just making jokes like everybody else. How are they taking “political advantage?” Are they running for something?
What’s unseemly is shotgunning an old man in the face and then trying to blame the old man for it.
So did Mr Cheney swing round too far and fire down the line of guns (is this called swinging through the line or something similar?) or did Mr Whittington get ahead of the line and into the shooting zone? Even as a city dweller in the UK who has never been on a shoot in my life, I assume these are the two most likely scenarios. I think they are the two most common ways for people to accidentally shotgun each other on organised shoots (followed by the old ‘loaded shotgun carried over the shoulder’ routine leading to the poor sap behind getting shot in the face).
Both happen occasionally even on organised static grouse and pheasant shoots/slaughters, never mind on walked-up shoots. But in general they follow from people having a momentary lapse of attention followed by someone else paying the price.
Can you imagine if it was? Man, it would still be just a hunting accident, but the humor value would go through the roof. We’d be talking about it a decade from now.