Here’s a note to all of our local gun enthusiasts (yes, Bruce, I’m talking to you): Howie Carr disrespects you way, way more than any Ted Kennedy-lovin’ brie-nibblin’ chardonnay-sippin’ Volvo-drivin’ lefty. Check out today’s column:
Hot damn! Shotgun deer-huntin’ season starts in these here parts Monday morning, and what in tarnation will any red-blooded, pickup-truck-driving, Budweiser-swilling toothless good ol’ boy be doing come Monday at dawn but tracking Bambi, or, failing that, Bambi’s mother?…
Look, I have nothing in particular against hunters. I just like to make sport of them once a year….
Here’s a story posted Tuesday in Gainesville, Fla. A wily deer ran between two hunters, one of whom opened fire. Toll: no deer, one hunter wounded. The spokesman for hunter safety, whatever that is, lectured the readers: Treat every gun as if it is loaded.
And every hunter, too, he might have added.
Let’s go down the annual reading of the fallen Nimrods, and this is only partial, the more amusing incidents. All of the following occurred this month: [Howie then recites several hunting accidents that he apparently thinks are funny despite the fact that several of them resulted in deaths.]
I could go on, until a half hour before sunrise Monday morning. But you get the picture. Watch yourself. Elmer Fudd is in the woods. He’s armed and most likely, he’s also drunk.
Wow. If anyone perceived to be left-leaning had written that column, they’d instantly be excoriated for being an elitist, out-of-touch, condescending snob. Come to think of it, though, maybe it’s not so surprising coming from someone who graduated from toney Deerfield Academy and now resides in leafy Wellesley.
A snob’s a snob, no matter who he voted for on Nov. 7.
Nobody hates drunken hunters more than a sober hunter.
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I would liken this to people in an ethnic or racial group who use ephitets that would get a NON-MEMBER a swift punch in the snoot. Yes, Howie can say it, but not Frank Phillips. So sue us.
to defend hunting while drunk. Seems like a remarkably bad idea. But there’s no indication, at least from Howie’s story, that any of the incidents he relates involves alcohol (unlike Dick Cheney’s recent misadventure). Here’s the MN story, for example. Nothing about anyone being drunk — just a tragic accident, apparently.
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I just don’t see the humor. But then, with Howie I usually don’t.
They also would have thrown in a bit about banning guns. Did Howie do that?
What are your thoughts? Please answer the nimrod below that thinks left leaners are 2nd Amendment enthusiasts.
as a confession of the vacuity of your original rant.
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Really, no syndicated left-leaning columnist anywhere and no Democrat of any stature anywhere advocates the complete banning of guns. Pers-1765 appears to be on speaking terms with a straw man.
I’ll take that as a tacit admission by you that I am correct. Thanks.
I defy you to find someone left-leaning who advocates banning guns.
“I know it’s in the Constitution. But you know what? Enough! I would like to say, I think there should be a law–and I know this is extreme–that no one can have a gun in the U.S. If you have a gun, you go to jail. Only the police should have guns. It’s ridiculous.” – Rosie O’Donnell
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“Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of Americans to feel safe.” – Diane Feinstein, US Senator
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“If it were up to me we’d ban them all [guns]” – Mel Reynolds, US Representative
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“I don’t care about crime, I just want to get the guns.” – Howard Metzenbaum, US Senator
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“You know I don’t believe in people owning guns, only the police and military. And I’m going to do everything I can to disarm this state.” – Michael Dukakis
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but – seriously – don’t even tell me there aren’t any bmg’ers who don’t agree..
So in defense of
you have found a quotation from an entertainer, two quotations from 1993, one from 1986, and another from a Senator who left office in 1995:
These quotations are so old that we have no means of looking at them in context. Were any of these folks joking, for example? If you had come up with anything recent, one could actually check for that. Responsible, non-trollish advocates backing up a position usually provide links with the context. Could you?
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Or am I to conclude that you can get away with your assertion because all Democrats and Liberals died after 1995?
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…except quotes from left-leaning advocates who are entertainers, and any quote older than 1995, and any quote that I later decide doesn’t fit, and nothing from Michael Dukakis, or women, and nothing from the internet, no french. That should cover it.
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Other than that, anything goes, except if it doesn’t.
While K Busch’s “defy you” may have been a bit of an overstatement, I think that this particular issue for Democrats has been fading for some time now– like about a decade. Many of the newly elected members of Congress explicitly torpedoed any notion of gun regulation, never mind banning.
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Republicans in 1994 were hot yo abolish the Dept of Education, and maybe the EPA, to boot. Are they still?
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blockquote>Republicans in 1994 were hot yo abolish the Dept of Education…are they still?
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some good ideas never go away.
Sheesh.
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On a more serious note, I suspect that many of the incidents cited in facetious or serious reports like these are the result of inexperience as much as alcohol. In my (literal) neck of the woods sportsmen know what they’re doing and in the ten years I’ve been privileged to live here I have yet to hear of a single accident, never mind fatality, involving a hunter or innocent bystander.
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I don’t hunt. I squirm at the thought of deliberately of killing a living creature myself, for any reason. I get upset when I see a squirrel get hit by a car, fercrissakes. But I have no animus toward hunters, and I they are among the most ardent preservationists and fervent lovers of nature’s beauty around these parts.
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It also helps that folks around here know the drill. My property is bounded by a wildlife preserve and my neighbors, enthusiastic sportsmen all, first ask me every year if they can hunt through my acreage rather than taking that permission for granted just because it was given once, and they respect the regs regarding the discharge of firearms in proximity to dwellings.
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For our part, we have the hunting season calendar prominently displayed on our fridge so we won’t go on hikes throught our woods when we might be mistaken for turkeys or deer. We don an orange cap conveniently placed by the door when we need to go out to do yard work during those times, because people sometimes misjudge distances.
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Hunting is like any other activity – like, say, felling trees with a chainsaw, which I’ve done – that involves potentially deadly tools. Practice and observance of safety rules means that the frequency of accidents or injuries goes down. Anecdotal evidence suggests it’s usually the suburban types who only hunt once or maybe twice a year, and who treat it with the same (for lack of a better word) sobriety as a football tailgate party, who hurt themselves and others, and who provide the grist for Howie’s mill.
…of gun ownership and hunting, I think I’ve never seen a drunk hunter.
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I have, however, seen drunk journalists.
This column is satire, not opinion.
It’s a bit of a reach to infer any serious 2nd ammendment commentary from it.
to infer any serious commentary on anything from anything Howie Carr writes.
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But from today’s column, it seems perfectly fair to say that Howie puts hunters in the same category that he puts liberals and homosexuals: barely human creatures worthy only of his contempt.
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I wonder what it’s like walking around with that much bile built up. I’d think that bitter pukey taste in the back of his throat would get tiresome.
This sounds like a pretty funny column…and a piece like this is pretty traditional for humorists in hunting season. I particularly liked this part:
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“…Treat every gun as if it is loaded.
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And every hunter, too…”
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Of course most hunters (the kind who come back with venison, rather than a bullet in their butt) wait until the hunt is over before breaking out the beers, but the ones who start drinking early always manage to provide some wacky stories for the local news.