Of Safe Gun Handling and Sane Responses

I decided to wait for the story of Dick Cheney's hunting accident to die down a bit before I commented. I am assuming the time is now, but then again, some "fresh" Abu Ghraib photos just surfaced, so who knows. Anyway, here goes.

There are many, many rules that go along with hunting, recreational shooting, and shooting sports. Any firearms enthusiast came name them all and will likely tell you what I am about to tell you. Mr. Cheney made a mistake, one that likely could have killed his hunting buddy. There are two safety rules that immediately came to my mind when the story "finally broke". The first was part of Hunting 101: Identify your target. You can never shoot without actually seeing what you are shooting at. It is just plain wrong if you do. The next rule is a basic firearms safety rule: Know your background. This basically means that you need to know what you might hit if your round misses its mark and continues on. You have to know how far it will go and what is out there that it may potentially hit. There were suggestions that Harry Whittington somehow wandered into the Vice President's background and there were some comments and opinions that he was being blamed for getting shot. While there may be some truth to the fact that he got himself into the line of fire, the simple fact remains: Dick Cheney pulled the trigger.

And you know what? He admitted to all of this. He took the blame.

The "story" here really is the fact that the VP's staff apparently left the decision to him as to how to handle "getting the story out" and he decided to wait, assure that Mr. Whittington was ok, let his family get their bearings and then gave the story to a local newspaper [The Corpus Christi Caller-Times] with Katharine Armstrong (the ranch owner on whose property the accident occurred) delivering the account. A shocker to be sure, but at this point end of story.

Wrong! Not even close.

Anyone who is reading this knows the details by now. We all have an opinion about how it was handled. From a purely political point-of-view, perhaps it was botched. I really cannot say. You see, I am not the vice president of the United States of America and I did not accidentally shoot a guy while I was hunting. But for the sake of argument, let us all put ourselves in Mr. Cheney's position. Not as the VP, but as who we are right now. Wonder if we had done the same thing? How would we feel knowing full well that the whole world was going to hear about this eventually? Does this warrant the "delay" in getting the story out? From a political standpoint, perhaps not. From a personal standpoint, you betcha!

First and foremost, everyone in the media appears to have forgotten that the victim in this situation is not a public official and because of that, they have no right to his information. Seriously. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) grants Mr. Whittington privacy regarding his medical condition. To be sure, it really is no one else's business how he is doing. Then, the White House press corps goes crazy about the slow response in getting the story out. Personally, I see it as sour grapes that they were left out of the scoop on this story. No one called them to tell them, so they had to then begin the multi-day assault of Scott McClellan on what they felt went wrong in the disseminating of this story. Some of them tied it to Hurricane Katrina and other issues they have with the Bush Administration. Now that is a leap of faith. Or is it somehow journalistic license?

Then came the "official" comments from the politicos, those wacky Democrats like Nancy Pelosi who tied this to her "culture of corruption". That catch phrase is worse than the vast right wing conspiracy. (SHH. I am a member of the VRWC, but the lefties still think it is a joke. Or do they?)

Finally, we had the likes of George Clooney wondering why no one was fired over this incident, Alec Baldwin ranting and raving on the Huffington Post discussing the civil trial between Mr. Whittington and VP Cheney and then somehow making the progression to Enron and Arnold Schwarzenegger being governor of California, and I think even Richard Dreyfuss chimed in, but he is about as incoherent as Al Gore these days, so I am not certain what his point was.

So what is the story here really all about? Will it become about the need for more "gun control"? It shouldn't, but the anti-Second Amendment crowd will likely get some mileage out of it, to be sure. Will it be about Dick Cheney drinking? Well, it shouldn't because from all factual accounts, his beer at lunch had no bearing on what happened. Besides, what difference does that make? If a liberal Hollywood star had a substance abuse problem and did something stupid, we'd be asked to sympathize. It would never make the 'world news', although Entertainment Tonight and Jon Stewart would likely treat it as a monumental story. And God forbid that we could even think to handle this the way we were told to handle the Bill and Monica story, as a "private matter". No, that could never happen because of Bush, Halliburton, the Iraq War, wiretapping, and tax cuts.

To quote a famous line from Cool Hand Luke, "what we have here is failure to communicate." At least a failure based on the way the mainstream media believes it should be done. We have a story that is really (fortunately by the outcome) not a big story at all. But in our instant information society, it did not come fast enough and also did not come through the "proper channels". We have politics in play in a terribly polarized political landscape and we let this story become big. It took on a life of its own and it crowded out the real stories of the week. The media should be ashamed of that. If anything, they are guilty of negligence in doing their jobs because they decided to "overlook" just about everything else that went on this week. We have high profile liberals using their celebrity to make baseless comments about a guy who has a real job where he doesn't just pretend to be someone he is not. And when that guy makes a mistake, everything else in the world is his fault simply because his policies aren't the same as Alec's or George's. We have a hunting accident that no one involved with feels was a big deal and yet it becomes the "shot heard 'round the world".

The only thing left to say is this: it was a big deal! Mr. Cheney did not identify his target and he apparently lost track of his background. I am certain he will remember this the next time he goes hunting. I just wonder if he will remember to tell everyone or if he will only tell Fox News. God help us all if that is his decision.