Sunday, February 25, 2007

The AR-15 "Equalizer" for particularly dangerous prairie dogs.

Modern hunters rarely become more famous than Jim Zumbo. A mustachioed, barrel-chested outdoors entrepreneur who lives in a log cabin near Yellowstone National Park, he has spent much of his life writing for prominent outdoors magazines, delivering lectures across the country and starring in cable TV shows about big-game hunting in the West.

Zumbo's fame, however, has turned to black-bordered infamy within America's gun culture -- and his multimedia success has come undone. It all happened in the past week, after he publicly criticized the use of military-style assault rifles by hunters, especially those gunning for prairie dogs.

"Excuse me, maybe I'm a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity," Zumbo wrote in his blog on the Outdoor Life Web site. The Feb. 16 posting has since been taken down. "As hunters, we don't need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them. . . . I'll go so far as to call them 'terrorist' rifles."

The reaction -- from tens of thousands of owners of assault rifles across the country, from media and manufacturers rooted in the gun business, and from the National Rifle Association -- has been swift, severe and unforgiving. Despite a profuse public apology and a vow to go hunting soon with an assault weapon, Zumbo's career appears to be over.

His top-rated weekly TV program on the Outdoor Channel, his longtime career with Outdoor Life magazine and his corporate ties to the biggest names in gunmaking, including Remington Arms Co., have been terminated or are on the ropes.

Ah, here we reach the rub. Listen, you gun-banning cretin: An argument could be made (and has been, by the Supreme Court in the Miller decision) that your hunting guns are not Constitutionally protected at all, except those that meet the requirements for militia service. In other words, if you have any scoped bolt guns in a service caliber, such as 5.56mm or 7.62 NATO, those are golden, but the .17 Remington 'chuck-popper you were fawning over in your name-dropping opening paragraph is a toy that is completely irrelevent to the spirit and intent of the Second Amendment.

Your attempt to throw me out of the sleigh, hoping that the wolves would be satisfied with my AR and would leave your precious bambi-zapper alone, is the most craven act of contemptible cowardice I've seen in a while. Now that I'm aware of your anti-gun nature, I'll be sure to cancel the one subscription to Outdoor Life that I have control over, and urge everyone else I know who subscribes to cancel theirs as well. Maybe after they ash-can you, you can go write policy columns for the Brady Center or the VPC.

I'm sure they'd love your little camouflage outfit and folksy wit. They'd find a place for you; after all, you're an "Authentic Gun Guy". *spit*