Cheney shoots fellow hunter...

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Anyone wanna talk about this?

Cheney shoots a 78 year old lawyer while on a hunting trip in Texas.

WH talking points:
1) It wasn't Cheney's fault. He did nothing wrong. Whittington, the lawyer, came out of nowhere (even though he was part of Cheney's hunting party).
2) The WH said nothing, so that the press only heard about it a day later, because they thought the owner of the ranch should be the one to tell the press.
3) Really, it was only a flesh wound. More of a bruise than anything; Whittington was just knocked around a little; it just looks like he has chicken pox; he's alert in the hospital and making passes at the nurses.
4) (Time magazine speculates that "White House aides can be expected to say that the Vice President did not shoot Whittington, which suggests a bullet, but rather sprayed him with birdshot, a type of ammunition made up of tiny pieces of lead or steel..." So Cheney didn't really shoot anyone.
5) Uh, lets talk about something else please...

Then again:
1) Look, if you shoot someone in your own hunting party, it's your own damn fault. You should know where everyone else is at all times.
2) Uh, first VP to shoot someone while in office since Aaron Burr, statement please?
3) Whittington was airlifted from the ranch and spent a full day in intensive care. He is currently listed in stable condition.
4) Will this administration take responsibility for nothing? How dare they blame the guy Cheney shot, and for what, stepping in front of his line of fire? Look, accidents happen (tho rarely: out of the million plus hunters in Texas, there were only 19 accidents last year involving firearms, 4 fatal), by why not be a man and take the blame when you've done something wrong?

 

Isn't that Uncle Jimbo's justification of choice? "He's comin' right for us!!"

(Requisite bad pun in 5...4...3...2..)

And to think...his supporters think of him as such a 'straight shooter.'

 

I read about this over the weekend and didn't think much of it (well other than 'we got a kick ass VP'). Hunting accidents happen all the time. Why does the press think they should be involved or informed of an accident? It certainly didn't affect the VP's performance in his job.

You're a bit off in hunting etiquette -- if you as a hunter leave your group, you damn well better not approach them without a warning (it's better to stay away until you're sure it's safe). Mr. Whittington seperated from the hunting party to collect a prize while the others in the party continued on. Once he left, he was no longer in the hunting party. Mr. Whittington should not have tried to rejoin until safe (i.e., a break in the action) and THEN ENSURED the other hunters knew of his presence. Cheney knew where the other person in his party was -- that Mr Whittington was coming up in a blind spot, without warning, IS an unfortunate accident. Whittington was damn lucky he didn't get peppered in his eyes.

The information was released -- I read it Sunday morning on Yahoo. Do I think it needed to be released at 5:30 PM on Saturday? Absolutely not.

 

Hah, what an idiot. What was he doing hunting anyway? Talk about setting a bad example!

 

Don't start with that, BA. This isn't a thread about hunting, it's about whether or not there's real news in the events of the weekend and how they were handled.

Personally, I think not.

 

Oh, I think it's very relevant to what we're talking about here. Was this news 'real news' and handled well? You bet your bollocks for a barn dance it is! Maybe the US made a bigger hubboo about it than we did here; but let's look at the story:

A man needs hospital treatment after being shot by a top US Gov. cheese. Not only that, it was during a HUNTING session, which is horrible on many levels in itself. What he was doing at the time is highly relevant here and it is very news-worthy IMO. If this was someone like John Prescott or Gordon Brown, there would be an uproar in Britain - mostly, at this story, we're shaking our heads again at the US gov. set-up...

 

It was my very first thought when I saw it on the news.

BA, I agree with Rally. But regardless of whether or not hunting is a sin, this most definitely is:

You're damn straight. My dad's a hunter, and I know that you do NOT shoot unless you are absolutely positively sure of exactly where your shot will go even if you miss. Cheney should have his license revoked immediately. Even one of the WH's talking points shows that this should have been easily avoidable.

If the guy was at a range where you couldn't tell where he was, it should have been only a few little bumps, not chicken pox. I think the guy should get to shoot him back when he gets out of the hospital.

 

Unless you've hunted, and in particular hunted for quail, you're likely unaware of the procedure and etiquette to be followed within a hunting party.

Typically, you'd break up in groups of 3 to 4 hunters and each group will identify what part of the hunting range they'll be moving through...this insures that one group can't accidently fire on another. I'm sure Cheney's group was much larger than this due to the presence of aides and Secret Service agents.

Within a group there are guidlines also. As the group moves through the designated range, members anounce when they are moving forward, either to claim a kill or move to the next covey. Wittington, and others present, say he failed to make the proper notification when he moved into some brush to claim some quail he'd just fired upon. He was struck by some pellets fired at a nearby covey.

Further, you should have an understanding of what quail hunting in particular is like. Most legal bag limits for quail range anywhere from 20 to 40 birds a day. You hunt with a shotgun with relatively small pellet size, but with a reasonably large dispersion. In a quail hunt there's a large number of shots taken and a very good chance to be struck if procedures aren't followed to the T.

As T2 has already stated...hunting accidents are tragically common...probably more so when hunting fowl than any other kind of critter. This thread isn't about the morality of hunting...we've already done that in another thread and for the most part the opponents dropped the debate and went away...don't even try to drag hunting ethics into this.

The question is whether this is a valid news story, and more particularly, whether it's grounds to be able to attack the White House. It's neither.

If you want to attack the White House...find a real story. If you want to attack hunting...revisit the thread where you've already been trounced.

 

Dudes, I'm afraid I have to call

I'm not a hunter, but I grew up around hunters, I've had training on shotguns, and I spent a bunch of boyhood weekends shooting skeet.

Of course there are protocols to follow when around people with guns, and of course not following them makes accidents more likely. But the burden of responsibility falls on the one pulling the trigger.

So I don't care if Whittington snuck up to Cheney in a giant quail suit, shooting him is still a boneheaded move.

A normal person, upon making a boneheaded move like that, would claim at least partial responsibility.

Think about it: if you went hunting and accidentally shot a friend, would you immediately blame them? Would you really want go hunting with someone who had shot someone else and refused to take any responsibility?

Hunting accidents aren't all that common; look at the statistics. If they were common, would it be responsible for the VP to hunt while in office?

If Cheney had related this immediately with an apology, instead of trying to diffuse blame, sure, he would have looked like a bonehead. But now, he looks like an @sshole, and even more, it just confirms a pattern of not taking responsibility for his own actions.

And I thought, from the Clinton years, that leadership was supposed to have something to do with "character."

 

How do you get to be a moderator saying things like that .

 

When I first heard of this, my gf and I started laughing so hard we almost fell off the sofa. This is one of the most hick things anyone can do, and it was the most un-hick person who did it!
Seriously, though, this isn't international news. I'm not even sure it should have made local news. It was a hunting accident and, as my gf's dad, who's an experienced quail hunter, pointed out, it's pretty hard to kill someone with quail-shot, even if you hit them in the eye. In fact, the eyes, mouth, and a few very soft parts of the body are the only ways you could even seriously injure someone with quail-shot, especially at range. The news is blowing this way out of proportion.
On the other hand, I do think Cheney should have taken credit, I mean responsability for it as soon as it got to the news. Of course, the liberals and democrats would have a field day with it either way, just one is worse than the other.
Man, the idea of Cheney quail hunting just makes me laugh.

 

I'm not trying to absolve Cheney of responsibility for this accident...he failed to know beyond doubt on what he was firing, and the victim failed to follow notification. Part of the reason this wasn't a news story right away was due to the confusion following the accident. There was no press corp or press secretary with Cheney, therefore no means to diseminate the information. Wittington had to travel 80 miles to the nearest hospital, and I'm sure no formal statements could be made until his condition was known and his family notified first. Scott McClellan has said that although the White House knew that an accident had happened on Saturday night, it wasn't until Sunday morning that they had names and details...and it was Sunday morning that the ranch owner notified the local press of the incident...as would be in keeping with a story such as this.

@BA

I'm not much of a moderator .

 

that is to say, he only moderates in moderation...

 

He sounds more like Elmer Fudd than a "kick ass" VP. The guy is incompetent, and it appears at more than just the job he does as VP. Can these guys do anything right?

You're a good moderator, HS....you just don't know much about politics.

This is part of a satire that appeared on MSNBC:

[ February 14, 2006, 04:54: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

They're really running this down on the Daily Show; right into the ground. They wouldn't stop saying that he "shot a 78-year old man in the face"; how many different ways they said it I can't tell you, but it was ridiculous. The one thing that interested me was the claim that this ranch only housed farm-raised quail that didn't even know how to fly. Is this true? Can anyone confirm with a legitimate news source?

 

You said it, dmc. Take it on the chin, co-operate, accept what happens, move on and there's no real story.

I'm not a fan of Cheney, but this is really making a mountain of a molehill. There are questions that need to be asked, certainly, but it's no better or worse than any other non-fatal shooting accident in a hunt.

True - my personal feelings on hunting aside, you're exactly right. Those are the sorts of things that should be looked at in any investigation; at worst, I imagine Cheney might have his hunting license suspended, and I don't think anything more serious is warranted. Still, even if Whittington wasn't following proper/standard hunting procedure, Dick still pulled the trigger and put the guy in hospital - and he should still have to answer for that (amen, Bion! ). I shouldn't think he'd cop anything more than a fine and license suspension or cancellation, IMO.

Maybe it's part of a plan to provide some decent evidence of "liberal media bias", since I've yet to see anything I'd call conclusive in that regard. Either that, or there's something else the Bush Administration is about to get crucified over that I'm not aware of...

 

One important rule of hunting is that you carefully select your traget before firing away, and clearly Cheney thought he was above common sense.

 

A lot of the normal hunting rules apply a little less here.......it was a canned hunt, as Felinoid pointed out. You walk up to where the cage is, they open the cage, and you open fire when the animal leaves. I'd say blaming this one on "the 78 year old man who was shot in the face" is, to say the least, in really bad taste.

 

Both Cheney and Whittington were in the wrong. Yes, both. Two important rules in hunting -- don't aim through your fellow hunters and don't stand in front of a loaded gun. Everyone in a hunting party is responsible for safety.

Drew: where do you get the 'canned hunt'? Cages? Do you know what the term covey means?

One last thing: Leave it to the anti-Bush crowd to turn a hunting accident into a political agenda point. Pure

I would rather have seen Cheney hunting Quayle a few years ago.... P-O-T-A-T-O-E. And if he was going to hit someone, the attorney would be the best target anyway (SP board members excluded).