Republicans can’t help themselves. They HATE it when a Democrat actually embodies qualities so many of them don’t posses. John Kerry was a bona fide war hero so they went after him with a vengeance since baby Bush dodged the draft during Vietnam by wrangling a Texas Air Nat. Guard spot. And when Kerry went hunting? Whew boy did they rip on him over an image of him walking in the field with his break-action shotgun being safely carried with it “broken open” and carried over his shoulder. Now they’ve chosen to attack VP candidate Tim Walz by claiming he was ‘clumsy’ or some such nonsense trying to “load” his shotgun. The problem with that narrative is the hunt was over. Walz was UN-loading his shotgun. And practicing good gun safety while doing so.
You can read about this dust up in this Newsweek article. It notes how the right is mocking Walz and having all kinds of fun using a few seconds of video with all the context left out. With so many decades of hunting under my belt even in THEIR version it seemed clear to me Walz was unloading his shotgun and in a manner to catch the shells in one hand instead of letting them fall onto the ground like my dad (and so many others I’ve seen) would do. It’s rather awkward with most shotguns to eject live shells safely and keep them from falling to the ground but at least you don’t have to check them to make sure they are clean before storing them for use later.
Anyway it was the first day of pheasant season and Walz was with some friends for an opening day hunt. And a bunch more Secret Service around which probably cause most of the bird to flee the field ahead of time. A reporter from Fox happened to be there and well, it’s Fox so once the footage was viewed back at the station it was realized they had a chance to take a normal moment and turn it into a LIE and mock Walz. Naturally the NRA was on speed dial and took over, creating a twitter/X post I refuse to show (if you feel the need click on the word ‘video’ below) but here’s the gist of it:
The video, accompanied by circus music, showed the Minnesota governor in a field with a gun, which the organization said he was attempting to load.
“Tim Walz previously claimed he kept a shotgun in his car so he could hunt pheasants after football practice,” the post said. “This is Tim Walz attempting to load his shotgun this past weekend.”
The clip showed Walz hunched over the gun working with a mechanism before tapping the butt pad. It ended with a graphic reading “that dog don’t hunt,” making the assertion the governor did not know how to use his firearm.
Reaction was swift. There was a community note pointing out that Walz was unloading (NOT loading) the shotgun with a link to a YouTube clip of someone else doing the same thing with the same model of shotgun. Walz was once well-rated by the NRA but after the Parkland shooting changed his views and his support for common sense gun control (including banning assault weapons) quickly dropped his NRA rating to “F.” Since I mentioned Parkland I should mention the linked article also includes some thoughts from the father of one of the victims:
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the Parkland school shooting, also replied to the post.
“This is the NRA proving that they know nothing about gun safety and preventing people from getting shot,” he said.
“@Tim_Walz is showing the right way to do this, safely. If ever you doubted who to listen to, focus on gun owners who believe in safety.”
I’ve unloaded many a shotgun in my years. Like my dad I started out just letting ejected shells fall on the ground. If they got some dirt or mud on them I’d just make sure to wipe them clean right away. It was only after I started duck hunting, standing in two or three feet of water in patches of woods I abandoned that. Even with the safety on carrying a loaded gun in or out of the place where we’d set up, wading through all that water was a bad as in unsafe practice. At the end of my first hunt I quickly racked the three shells out and of course they went straight into the freaking water! So I learned a technique to catch them. It can be a bit awkward (as you see) whether shells eject out the side or the bottom (as Walz’s shotgun does) when shells don’t always cleanly eject. (More common than you think as often one doesn’t rack the bolt back all the way.
However Walz practices good gun safety and ALWAYS kept the barrel pointed in a safe direction. Safety was more important than looking ‘cool’ and Fox and the NRA and conservatives in general decided to rip on him for it. By LYING. Again, he wasn’t having trouble LOADING his shotgun. He was carefully UN-loading it! Below is a link to a story about the trip. It’s only a few minutes and worth watching but you can skip to the end for the important part that’s the cause of this manufactured ‘controversy.’ One thing that caught my attention is Walz passing on a shot because the rooster was a young one. Like a good conservationist Walz wanted it to grow older and help make more pheasants. I’ve done the same with deer. A buck that’s only two or three years old with a decent rack should be allowed to grow older and pass along those genes. That’s an entirely different conversation however.
The thing is, if you skip to the end of the video you’ll see the context missing from what the NRA put out. Even in their deceptively edited clip if you look closely (and I did when I checked it out on twitter) you can see Walz’s hand quickly slip the shells into the pocket of his vest before tapping the butt-plate of his shotgun! So if some conservative/MAGA goober wants to talk trash about ‘Walz can’t even load a shotgun without fumbling’ hit them back with the fact he was UN-loading the thing. And doing so safely. Even tell them to go back and look at the video to see for themselves, including him slipping the shells into his vest. Or give them this link or at least direct them to YouTube:
If they didn’t lie they’d all be on the street looking for real work.
I’d be interested in knowing if ANY of the NRA’s “leaders” even know how to operate any kind of gun. (I’d also kind of like to know why it is that the NRA bans the possession of guns from any of their meetings/conventions. Surely, those places–presumably filled with “good guys”–wouldn’t have any reason to keep their members from carrying out their basic Second Amendment rights. And yet, they limit the possession of weapons from anyone but security.)
The only thing more abysmal than hunting is the outright torture of animals for the simple and deranged pleasure of performing the act…..that is exactly what the NRAs new President Doug Hamilton was convicted for in his youth.
You see, when old Douggie was in college, he and his other simpleton frat house goons purposely tortured and killed their frat house mascot by cutting off of it’s paws, hanging it upside down, and setting it on fire….the cat’s offense….missing it’s litter box…..that’s the kind of sick mother fukkers we are dealing with here. May they all go to Hell and fn rot there, scumbag filth along with anyone who kills animals for “sport”.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nra-ceo-doug-hamlin-cat-torture-michigan_n_67101085e4b0907fa507df1f
You’re entitled to your opinion of those who hunt and fish. What killed (and same for those I knew) went into my fridge or freezer and got eaten. And some I gave away. You might not eat meat at all but consider this. All the extra veggies grown to support more people and the increasing number of vegetarians and vegans requires land. This has meant loss of HUGE swaths of what was once wildlife habitat. How many animals (not just game animals) died of starvation or increased risk of predation due to loss of habitat? Not just in California either. The prairie pothole region of the upper midwest was devastated by being converted into farmland. And tons of wetlands in other places has been filled in for farming. Flooding seems to be an apppropriate thing to bring up at the moment.
Tilling land for crops destroys a lot of smaller animals that live under the surface, as well as insects that benefit animals that live above happen to consume. It’s just not as simple as some people want to make it. So call me a despicable person if you will, but no living creature or organism exists on this planet without hosting upon or even killing other living things. That includes people like you who condemn people like me who are/were willing to endure physical hardship to go out and get some of our own meat and fish.
Beyond the whole fishing/hunting debate. Don’t we all know that the NRA is just a russian disinformation campaign that has nothing to do with guns, but with trying to undermine democracy here in the US. btw, I couldn’t unload or load a shotgun or shoot it for that matter. I did get to shoot 22 rifles in boy scouts back in the day. never caught on for me.
When I was growing up and even into adulthood the NRA was fairly well respected and with some actual good reason. They didn’t just talk but had serious and widespread education on gun safety. They promoted shooting sports and had good classes/instructors to teach people and without charging folks an arm and a leg. Their safety education extended to specific hunter education in every state. They sponsored and coached our Olympic Shooting Team. They actually did worthwhile things.
Now, there WAS all along a smaller component that lobbied against gun regulation. It was called the ILA – Institute for Legislative Affairs and yes they could get extreme at times but in the end didn’t kick up a lot of public fuss most of the time. But the proverbial working structure was the NRA and its gun/hunting safety along with responsible firearm ownership and instruction was in charge and the ILA was the proverbial sidecar. That started to change some in the 1980s and by the time Wayne LaPierre was hired to be the boss and face of the NRA the ILA became ascendant. The organization became not just conservative but downright militant and in effect the ILA and the ‘no gun regulation of any kind’ mentality took over.
The thing is, even before LaPierre the NRA was poorly managed. Thanks in large part to personal friendships at the highest levels an advertising company, Ackerman-McQuade (AckMac as it was called within the NRA offices) had quite the sweetheart deal. They were raking in the cash and given the low cost of NRA membership and their not charging an arm and a leg for their publications or all that safety instruction they were bleeding money. As you know the media environment changed in the 1980s and THAT made PR and advertising quite a bit more expensive. The financial bleeding turning into blood pouring out and the NRA has been juggling financial running chain saws for over three decades.
Given their lobbying focus it’s no wonder Putin saw and took an opportunity to get his hooks into the NRA. It dovetailed nicely with another long-term initiative he had to sucker preaches and elders in churches in small-town/rural America with tales of “freedom” of gun ownership in the post USSR Russia. He even sponsored junkets for them to visit Russia to see all that “freedom”, both “religious” and “gun rights” for themselves. It was all a sham of course but taking a bunch of small town folks who’d seldom been out of their own states and whisking them away to a strange country and some other small town place where who they spoke to, who guided them around and what they saw was carefully controlled did the trick.
It increased support for the NRA and its now downright militant gun rights stance and allowed infiltration of the NRA’s leadership. And money. Money that Russia could pass through the NRA to U.S. politicians. Some of them knew damn well where that new influx of donations originated and some were ‘useful idiots’ who perhaps wondered but chose not to actually do any digging. The thing it the whole scheme worked pretty well.
Maria Buttina was just the tip of the iceberg. The Trump administration managed to diffuse the situation to a degree and among the things Barr did was to make it damned near impossible to properly build cases against NRA officials. Of course that was always his specialty. He’s a corrupt and despicable man but that’s why he became AG the first time around under Bush 41 – to kill off the Iran-Contra investigation. The elder Bush doesn’t seem to have actually been in on any of that but he had to know at least a little of what had gone on and didn’t say jack shit. Still, it was a potential scandal he didn’t want to have to explain so Barr’s job was to just kill the whole matter and that’s what Barr did even if the process let some people off the hook the elder Bush wouldn’t have minded seeing get convicted.
The point is that Barr has a particular talent for screwing investigations he doesn’t want to go anywhere and THAT is why the NRA is still there. It’s nowhere near the powerhouse it used to be but it’s still in operation and a lot of people who should have been tried and convicted have walked free. At least since they are incorporated in NY the AG up there has put some effort into crippling them financially. I long for the day when they have to put their fancy building in Fairfax County Virginia up for sale. And for good measure DC will decide to go after them and force the sale of the building near Logan Circle where their headquarters used to be.
Back when I worked for the Izaak Walton League of America (Outdoor Ethics Coordinator) I made friends with a couple of guys from NRA Hunter Services division. When the IWLA couldn’t get funds to keep my program going I wound up having a consulting gig with Hunter Services. A few of the guys were kind of hard core but most didn’t care about politics – only teaching and promoting hunting and safety. One of those people was second in command of the dept. and his boss was never around because he was becoming part of the top leadership. Cliff was slated to become head of Hunter Services and talked to me about coming on board in his job due to my management skills and reputation in the hunter/conservation community. Yes, I had misgivings but nothing got decided and it became moot. Cliff was retired Navy. An Academy grad from the same class as James Webb and Ollie North and he witnessed the infamous boxing match described in Webb’s novel A Sense of Honor. His job in the Navy was as an accountant.
He kept getting pulled into helping the brass (LaPierre had full control by then) sort out the financial mess and in the end got pulled from Hunter Services. But thirty years ago I knew that organization was in deep financial shit and a decent amount of why. If it were up to me those NRA leaders who made their deal with Putin/Russia to keep things afloat are alive they should be put on a C-130 and strapped into parachutes. Flown across the border into Russia and after being hooked up to a static line (to pull the ripcord on their chutes) pushed out near some small Russian town.
And let them go through the hassle of trying to get to a consulate, and trying to get documents to travel back to the U.S. Assuming Pootie doesn’t decide to hang onto them just for his warped version of fun.
The nra cares nothing at all about the second amendment. It is just a tool for them to use on the reactionary tools they get their money from. It is a scare tactic they use when their coffers get a little bit low and whichever thief needing a new suit needs to raid said coffers. Similar to trump the nra is an organization of grifters. I do not know if they still have their coveted tax-free status from the I.R.S. but if the do, it needs to be revoked immediately (should have been years ago).
If these criminals truly were pro-second amendment they would realize things like background checks, outlawing add-ons to firearms like bump stocks, keeping firearms out of the hands of domestic violence perpetrators and folks deemed dangerous, ARE pro-second amendment. One of these days the citizens of our nation will put the kibosh on unrestricted gun ownership. It might be a change in the makeup of the s.c., it might be in the form of a constitutional amendment either outlawing firearm ownership or severely restricting it, it might be proj. 1825 just outright saying “these are the only people who can have firearms in their possession” (we all know 6 corrupt cons on the s.c. will pull something out of their collective asses to allow such a thing-it isn’t as if they are not making it all up as they go now). Point is, unrestricted firearm possession will one day go away. In order for reasonable ownership to continue people need to start taking a look at how that amendment is actually written-paying attention to that little thing called punctuation, and legislating firearm ownership appropriately.
I own firearms. I WANT legislation requiring background checks. I want legislation outlawing crap that exists ONLY to make sure a firearm kills as many people as possible in a short amount of time (bump stocks, large magazines, etc. are NOT firearms any more than a lawn dart is). I want to continue to own my firearms (all of which are registered, stored safely (at the moment-who knows when the revolution comes)).
I want, no demand, the nra be treated like the criminals, and tax-evading criminals at that, they are and I want them to get a real good case of gone. They used to be a gun use/hunter safety organization way back in the day. They now could give a happy rat’s ass less about safe gun use and in fact are likely behind the overthrow of our freely and fairly elected government-in 2021 and now. They are now an organization of domestic terrorists and need to be treated accordingly.