Tag Archives: NRA

For Safety’s Sake, Some Gun Collectors Should Switch to Stamps

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According the Associate Press,five people were wounded in accidental shootings at gun shows in North Carolina, Indiana and Ohio on Saturday. That’s five shooting victims—all in one day!

At the Dixie Gun and Knife Show in Raleigh, a 12-gauge shotgun discharged as its owner unzipped its case for a law enforcement officer to check at a security entrance, injuring three people, a state Agriculture Department spokesman said. Two bystanders and a retired deputy sheriff were hit by shotgun pellets and taken to a hospital.

Sheriff Donnie Harrison said that it was too early to know whether the shotgun’s owner might be charged, but that it appeared to be an accident. (But don’t be surprised if the victims are the ones who end of being charged—with failure to wear a bullet proof vest at a public gun show.)

The North Carolina show, which is held at the state fairgrounds (not annually, but four times a year), usually draws thousands of people (some of whom actually survive the event unscathed).

In Indianapolis, police said a 54-year-old man was injured when he accidentally shot himself while leaving a gun show. (He could have saved himself the entry fee if he would have just shot himself before leaving home.)

Emory L. Cozee, of Indianapolis, was loading his .45 caliber semi-automatic when he shot himself in the hand as he was leaving the Indy 1500 Gun and Knife show at the state fairgrounds. Police said that loaded personal weapons aren’t allowed inside the show, but (presumably since the shooting occurred outside the building in the fairgrounds parking lot) no charges will be filed. (After a trip to the emergency room, Cozee is comfy once again.)

And in Ohio, a gun dealer was checking out a semi-automatic handgun he’d just bought when he accidentally pulled the trigger. The gun’s magazine had been removed, but one round remained in the chamber, police said. The afore-mentioned (magic) bullet appears to have ricocheted off the floor and struck the gun owner’s friend in the arm and leg. The (erstwhile) friend was taken by helicopter to a hospital 30 miles north in Cleveland; his condition was not immediately known.

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Now I’m not trying to trounce on anyone’s God-given American rights (except the self-allocated “right” to hunt and kill animals recreationally), but for safety’s sake, maybe some of these folks should take up crocheting, knitting or collecting stamps, rather than gun collecting. Once they’ve mastered benign hobbies such as these, if they still feel the puerile need to prove their machismo, they could work back into it slowly, starting with craft shows or canasta tournaments.

Hell, it sounds like playing Russian roulette is probably a safer pastime than attending some of those gun shows.

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Time to control gun violence—against animals

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As predictable as the fact that there will be another mass shooting in this country again sometime is the inevitability that when it happens talk of controlling gun violence will crop up again. The two seem to go hand in hand. The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School is a case in point; the media has been rife with talk of controlling gun violence—against people.

But when I saw a recent article about a handgun buyback it hit me: most mass murderers use high-powered rifles—hunting rifles—but the buyback is only for handguns. Why isn’t there a buyback on hunting rifles? Oh, that’s right, hunting is a sacred institution—perpetuated by the likes of Dick Cheney, Ted Nugent and the NRA—no one can touch it. Forget all the violence done to animals, or even to crowds of people, if it means going up against hunting.

Never do you hear a peep about stopping gun violence against non-human animals. It’s as if they are inanimate objects, living targets to practice on. But if we really want to prevent the next school shooting or mass murder of mall shoppers, isn’t it time we address the violence inspired and nurtured by hunting?

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Sun Tzu: the Art of War For the Wildlife

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Like any other technological advancement, the internet is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Social media is a great venue for educating and rallying caring people and amassing an army of kind folks to work together for a positive change.

At the same time, it can also be a meeting place and breeding ground for sick minds sunk so deep in the gutter that hate oozes from every pore. The general public is now well aware of the problem of pedophiles and stalkers trolling the internet, but there’s another malevolence out there they don’t hear much about—mainly because the crimes committed by these psychopaths are legal.

I’m talking about the prideful trophy hunters showing off their kills on Facebook; the sneering wolf hunters and trappers who post their grotesque triumphs on webpages where they know they’ll be viewed by people who are already so distraught that one more image may push them over the edge. It’s part of the game to them, to see who snaps first. Don’t be their next victim.

My advice to those of you who, like me, can’t stand seeing another NRA leader gloating over a dead water buffalo, or country star hunched over a bear he murdered with a bow in a fenced in canned hunting compound, or a wolf-hunting website designed just to turn the stomachs of kindhearted wolf advocates: don’t go there—at least for a day or two. Take some time off if you need to. Hold on to the anger, but try to pace yourself. Wars are not won by those who are blinded by rage or lost in a pit of depression. There’s an art to war; it takes self-discipline and careful strategy to be victorious.

Rome wasn’t toppled by the first invading army; like the decadence of sport hunting, it had to crumble from within first.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

 

 

This Christmas, Show the Hunters that You Care

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Judging by the frost on the grass and the ice on the birdbath, it’s time to start thinking about Christmas shopping. This year, your gifts can make a statement—they can show the hunters that you care.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean you should show hunters that you care about them—no, quite the opposite—I mean you can show the hunters that you care about wildlife. And what better way than purchasing a pro-wildlife/anti-hunting book, like Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport?

There’s a common misconception that hunters are the only ones who “care” about wild animals. For example, when I brought some of my framed wildlife photos (such as the trumpeter swan seen here) to a small-town art gallery, the owner said, “Well, you might be able to sell them to a hunter…” My first reaction was an under-the breath “What the hell?” quickly followed by a resolute, “Never mind, I’m not hanging them here.”

I don’t know if it’s a sign of the self-absorbed, economocentric times we live in, but it seems Black Friday is garnering more attention than Thanksgiving these days. Across the country, you’ll find headlines like, “2 seriously hurt as driver plows through crowd of shoppers,” “Massachusetts bargain hunter took home TV, left tot” or “Earlier Black Friday kicks off shopping season.”

That last article reports: “This year’s Black Friday shoppers were split into two distinct groups: those who wanted to fall into a turkey-induced slumber and those who’d rather shop instead.” I’m guessing (hoping, really) that readers of this blog fall into still another category altogether.

The article goes on to say: “Stores typically open in the wee hours of the morning on the day after Thanksgiving that’s named Black Friday because of retail folklore that it’s when merchants turn a profit for the year. But after testing how shoppers would respond to earlier hours last year, stores such as Target and Toys R Us this year opened as early as Thanksgiving evening. That created two separate waves of shoppers.

Lori Chandler, 54, and her husband, Sam, 55, were a part of the early group. By the time they reached the Wal-Mart in Greenville, S.C. early Friday, they had already hit several stores, including Target and Best Buy. In fact, they had been shopping since midnight.

‘It’s a tradition,’ Lori said as she looked at some toys she bought for her four grandchildren….”

I’m sure you get the idea.

You’re probably not the type to camp out in front of Wal-Mart for the best deals on Asian sweatshop-produced, future landfill-clogging plastic trinkets, or you wouldn’t be here reading this post. But don’t worry, you won’t have to stand in line and risk being “plowed through” by some crazed shopper driving a Humvee or lose your “tot” in a crowded superstore while attempting to purchase Exposing the Big Game. You can order copies online from the comfort of your own home. If you’re not a fan of Amazon or Barnes and Noble, feel free to email me at exposingthebiggame@gmail.com for signed copies sent directly to your doorstep. Or you can ask your local “brick and mortar” bookstore (which is more than likely on the verge of going out of business) to order in a copy or copies for you. And of course, Exposing the Big Game is also available in e-book form.

There are around a butcher’s dozen new pro-hunting books on the market this year, while Exposing the Big Game is the only anti-hunting book to come out in decades, and the only one still in print. Don’t let the hunters think you’re indifferent about this issue. Together we can put an end to the absurd misconception that they’re the only ones interested in wildlife. While we don’t have the kind of financial support that the hunting industry gets from the NRA or the Safari Club, here’s our chance to show them that we’re the ones with the passion!

To Wildlife, They’re All Assault Weapons

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During last night’s debate, the president accused his opponent of pandering to the NRA by changing his stance on so-called “assault weapons.” The accusation is valid—former Governor Mitt Romney also pandered to the pro-gun lobby big-time by tapping die-hard “sportsman,” Paul Ryan, as his running mate. But at the same time he made the accusation, President Obama pandered to the NRA himself.

Though Barack Obama has never been a hunter (to his credit), he was quick to give oral tribute to hunters and “sportsmen” who use their weapons regularly and repeatedly (albeit “legally”) to assault the non-human citizens of this country. At the risk of showing his hand, I’d speculate that if it wasn’t for the power of the National Rifle Association to make or break an election, the president, deep down, would ultimately prefer to see all dangerous weapons banned.

Though they tiptoed gingerly around the subject, both candidates agreed that all guns are dangerous in the wrong hands. From the point of view of the wildlife, all weapons are assault weapons—and all hunters are the “wrong hands.”

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Like the KKK, the NRA will eventually Fade Away

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Comparatively speaking, the body of hunters in America is withered and shrunken, only a wee fraction of its former self. Today there are six times as many photographers, bird watchers and others who enjoy seeing animals alive as those compelled to make them lie down and die. Like the KKK and the SLA, the NRA has seen its day and will rightfully fade away. Literally, figuratively and statistically, hunting is a dying sport.

But non-hunters should not be lulled into a false sense of security for wildlife. Sportsmen, though a skeletal minority, are a shrill and voluble 5 (or 6) percent when it comes to forcibly interjecting themselves into animal issues; they‘re reluctant, to say the least, to kiss their blood-sport goodbye and join the civilized world.

The NRA and other heavily-funded hunting groups are pushing to pass laws such as the odious “Hunting Heritage Protection“ acts (already shoved on several states), aiming to enshrine their perceived “birthright“ to shoot and kill nonhumans recreationally.

Worse yet are the unconstitutional Hunter Harassment laws, which essentially punish residents and land-owners for trying to protect animals and keep hunters off their properties. In direct answer to the drop in sportsmen’s numbers, meddlesome state game departments are encouraging young kids to get a taste for killing (perverting their natural affinity for animals).

Alabama opens deer season two days early for children under the age of 16 (so they’ll have a better crack at “bagging“ one), and Maine holds a “Youth Deer Day,” allowing pre-season bow hunting for children ages 10 to 16. States like Illinois and Colorado are preying on women by offering hunting lessons for single mothers, while the private pro-hunting programs “Becoming an Outdoors-woman“ and the NRA’s “Women on Target” are seeking to enlist the future Sarah Palins of America.

Fouler still are the ongoing schemes to open more and more public lands to hunting…

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The preceding was excerpted from the book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport

“Ditch the Bitch, Let’s go Hunting!”

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That insolent motto was the message of a bumper sticker displayed on the back window of a beater pickup truck parked at my local store yesterday. The words read above and below the outline of a trophy four-point buck (with his body turned sideways, presenting the kind of “perfect shot” that hunters have wet dreams about). If you’ve been through a rural American town during hunting season, you’ve probably noticed this popular line of window decals—many of which show the animal within the crosshairs of a rifle scope—on about every truck and SUV around, often accompanied by the ubiquitous NRA sticker.

The telltale idiom, “Ditch the bitch, Let’s go hunting,” calls into question the average sport hunter’s oft-professed “respect,” not only for deer, but also for women—both of whom are equally objectified.

It also brings up the question, how can a woman who loves animals be with a hunter?

The polite answer must be, with much internal conflict.

Depending on how much and how heartily a woman loves animals, they would have to be willing to accept hunter’s feeble rationalizations and disregard their own gut feelings. If they really loved animals, surely they’d be saddened by a bloody carcass hanging in the garage, and uncomfortable knowing that it was the product of their significant other’s murderous intent.

Some women adapt by retreating into their shell, denying their own principles. Others go even further, actually becoming hunters themselves—which is really schizo when you think about it. No, actually schizophrenia is too tame a word for whatever disorder they must be suffering from. Boasting rap sheets that include the pre-meditated murders of such victims as deer, elk, caribou, pronghorn antelope and polar bear (not to mention untold African trophy animals), some of these monsters make Sarah Palin look like a choir boy.

These confused women are so into it they write articles about their exploits for kill magazines or participate in wildlife snuff films for the sportsmen’s channels. One of them tells her readers, in an article she calls “Antelope Addiction”: “Feeling a little defeated anyway, I decided to call it a day… [Phil] was determined for me to get my antelope. Day after day he put me in great places and I just couldn’t get it right. Back in camp, I went straight to our room and cried in frustration.” Typical of a psychopath, her tears are not shed for her victims, but for herself. We never hear of her crying for the animals she causes to suffer and die—only when she doesn’t get her way by making a successful kill.

On a “better” day, she boasts of impaling a female black bear with an arrow: “The beautiful sow carefully approached my bait area from behind my stand…she finally approached my shooting lane…I sent my arrow through the air for a perfect hit. She jumped and growled and ran off for a short distance of fifty yards before I heard what most people call the ‘death cry’. That’s when I realized I had made the perfect shot!” The perfect shot?!? The bear struggles for FIFTY YARDS before dying, and she calls it a “perfect shot”???!!

As an example of how these lady-nimrods are duped into thinking that their actions don’t result in the misery of a sentient being, she goes on to say, “Hearing the death cry didn’t disturb me, because my husband had told me that the death cry is just the air being released from the lungs after the animal has expired.” How convenient. Knowing that women may have a bit more compunction about the torment they’re inflicting, their male counterparts are quick to draw from the hunters’ volumes of validations, or dream up all new justifications on the spot, to quell any concerns for the animals that members of the fairer sex might have.

For a more in depth examination of animal thrill-killers, visit Shannon Wright’s great blog and list of the 12 Most Vile: http://shannonwright1.wordpress.com/

Hunters aren’t the only ones clever enough to come up with catchy slogans for bumper stickers. How about: “Ditch the Bastard, Let’s Stop Hunting!” Got another idea for a sticker? Feel free to post them to the Comments section. Here are a couple of my favorites: