Posted on 02/12/2006 12:46:46 PM PST by bayourant
Edited on 02/12/2006 2:10:43 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.
Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.
Armstrong said Whittington was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
Whittington was in stable condition Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.
Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president was with Whittington, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, and his wife at the hospital on Sunday afternoon.
Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shot at a covey of quail late afternoon on Saturday.
Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and found a second covey.
Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong told the Associated Press in an interview.
"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."
The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
She said Whittington was bleeding but not very seriously injured, and Cheney was very apologetic.
"It broke the skin," she said. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."
She said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington, holding his face and cleaning up the blood.
"Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."
Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year. She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together.
"This is something that happens from time to time. You now, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.
___
Associated Press writer Paul Weber in Dallas contributed to this report.
Of course...that's why they waited 24 hours to report the incident, which actually occurred yesterday. Oh-oh...
There are less people injured in hunting accidents than skiing annually. And, most hunting accidents/deaths, in recent years, have been attributed to falls from treestands.
Second hand injuries (from hunting), like second hand smoke,is the figment of somebody's imagination. The stats are there to prove it.
I'll concede this. I should have waited for additional reports. OK?
I guess you've pretty much summed up the uber-high ambient Cognitive Dissonance Index in the patter offered up by the, um, "apologists" in this thread.
"It's a normal part of quail hunting."Getting shot?
For giggles, a little brain-exercize: Imagine how this thread would be going, if instead of Cheney, the shooter was Kerry, or Gore, during one of their famous hunts.
Call me cynical but frankly I just don't see the kind of rising-to-the-defense of the shooter that we see happening here. I think people would be all over the shooter -- rightfully, of course -- for their negligent discharge.
It is sad to see partisan politics so ingrained that we're smothered in "The King Can Do No Wrong" groupthink in a situation so serious as a gunshot wound!
In fact, forget all about Gore and Kerry. Let's look at the current situation, and ask ourselves how things would have gone down if the roles were reversed.
My guess? We'd have one dead lawyer, and a passel of Secret Service Agents spending the next week filling out reams of paperwork. (And, an endless conga line of posters reminding us of the need to "keep foremost in mind the rules of safe firearms handling, at ALL times, to prevent tragedies like this from happening again.")
A little objectivity, folks. That's all I ask. OK, I lied. I ask that, and some rational, logical thinking process.
"Its all fun and games till someone gets his eye put out."
Naw, it was when the retriever kept trying to pick him up and drag him back to Cheney.
I was talking about rabbit hunting and protecting your dogs. And I have been dove and quail hunting more times than I can remember. Both with and without dogs.
I think Cheney ought to do some more bird hunting down at the Mexican border!
So not reminiscent of Genghis Kerry or Ft. Marcy Park???
Great tagline fanfan! Thanks to you I now know my response to any idiot lefty that tries throwing this nonsense in my face!!
Actually, I had a guy (not a hunter, a poacher and lowlife) tell me that's how he trains his bird dogs.
I made the mistake of hunting with him once, and he saw my sweet little 60 pound setter (awesome dog) in the field and decided he'd steal her (kept offering to buy her and I told him she was NOT for sale, any price, and I wouldn't sell him a dog anyway).
Finally, I put her in the house, I worried so much about this asswipe with my dog. One day, I let her out in the front yard (had a picket fence) and was watching when he drove by, slammed on his brakes, and pulled over in my yard.
Just as he was headed for my fence, I stepped outside and told him "That dog is NEVER outside without my watching her. She lives in my house, and the only way you'll get her is to come into my house, and I WILL shoot your ass when you do."
And I meant it.
No, I merely observed a political reality. YOU seem "really exercized" about me pointing out the obvious.
This isn't a rank issue.
Sez you. Rather unconvincingly, I might point out. You can try repeating it a few more times, but I doubt that will do the trick. :)
It happens.
Wow. "It happens" is now an affirmative defense to a negligent gunshot injury? Kowabonga!
The list of "it happens" things is endless. I find your novel defense theory to be quite... amusing.
It's probably just an accident.
LOL!
Oh, THAT makes it all OK then. It was an accident!
Just out of curiosity, can you deconstruct the phrase "Negligent Discharge", and tell me the meaning of the first word, in the context of that phrase, and what relationship it has to real-life events featuring two humans, a firearm a bullet, and an impact?
And it has absolutely nothing to do with your traffic accident, you can't analogize to brake lights or rear-end collisions. Customs and practices in the field are not Uniform Rules of the Road, and there isn't any legal liability issue here.
Oh, this is rich. You can SHOOT someone, and as long as you were "merely" negligent, it's no-harm, no-foul, NO LEGAL LIABILITY ISSUE???
Good Lord, you ARE saying that! You said EXACTLY that!
Please do your "hunting" far away from "me and mine", OK? Your grasp of firearms safety issues and lack of any comprehension of the potential for LIABILITY if you "have an accident" that kills me, add up to what can only be construed as a menace!
Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, was "alert and doing fine" in a Corpus Christi hospital Sunday after he was shot by Cheney on a ranch in south Texas, said Katharine Armstrong, the property's owner. The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. The vice president's office did not disclose the accident until nearly 24 hours after it happened. Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail. Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second covey. Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong said. "The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."
sometimes you just want to shoot a lawyer...just can't help yourself!!
one has to ask themselves: WHO is the District Attorney for Nueces County., and does he have the power to bring charges without a complainant? Could you imagine if it was Ronnie Earle's county.
I beleive the guy is a Clinton Fan....May be wrong.
I found a qoute from a interview about him
Interviewer: Out of the office, what do you do to mentally unwind?
Carlos Valdez: I golf and read. “My Life” by Bill Clinton (is the most recent book he read). It is a political biography.
This is crazy, I can't wait to hear what my idiot officemates have to say about this. The headache is already growing!
I guess I should donate more money to the NRA for hunter/shooter education purposes! Bottom line, is you always have to be careful when hunting/shooting. I've been peppered (ever so lightly) on a duck hunt before. Any bird hunting where you are pushing grass/brush, you always have to keep an eye on other hunters. Every time I have hunted pheasant with friends, it seems that people are pushing at a different rate. Be it differences in terrain you are on, or just trying to get an early lead on a bird. You always have to be careful.
FReeper fanfan has the best tagline: "I'd still rather hunt with Cheney than drive with Kennedy"
DUmmies are idiots. I don't find it surprising at all that the AR group is upset that someone didn't die.
Don't let that tagline material slip away!
Did you forget the /sarcasm tag, or just clueless?
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