The Blog Heard 'Round The Industry

Chattanoogan.com ^ | February 20, 2007 | Jim Shepherd

[holymoly]

Jim Zumbo angers firearm enthusiasts.

Legendary hunting writer Jim Zumbo has incurred the wrath of thousands of shooting enthusiasts with a weekend posting on his now-suspended blog for Outdoor Life magazine.

In the posting, Zumbo said "assault rifles" (or "terrorist" rifles as he went on to refer to them) had "no place" among "our hunting community." Adding that in his "humble opinion…these things have no place in hunting" because "We don't need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them, which is an obvious concern."

Zumbo went on to say "game departments should ban them from the praries (sic) and woods."

That kicked off a firestorm among owners of so-called "black rifles". Within hours, internet sites had reproduced the offending blog, kicking off thousands of angry emails and internet postings.

Subsequently, in what may one day be classified as the worst apology ever written (aptly titled "I was wrong, BIG TIME") Zumbo attempted to soothe readers, attributing his remarks to being tired following a long day of hunting coyotes in extreme weather conditions.

He went on recount his 40 years of NRA membership and the United States Sportsmen's Alliance, an organization, which, he wrote, "actively fights anti-hunters and animal rights groups for hunter's rights." He also told readers he had plans to go hunting with an AR-style rifle to give them a try.

At that point, however, there was little, if anything, that would assuage an angry horde of electronically mobilized AR fans. They considered Zumbo's remarks as being tantamount to a sellout, with Zumbo offering up "black rifles" as a sacrificial lamb for anti-gun forces.

In an appearance on Tom Gresham's national radio show "Gun Talk" Sunday afternoon, Zumbo attempted to apologize, but listeners didn't seem to be buying his verbal apology. If anything, any attempt to assuage them only fanned the flames of outrage.

Over the course of the afternoon and evening, various executives associated with Zumbo posted their own comments on his blog site, attempting to deflect the anger at directed at Zumbo away from their companies.

It didn't work.

Instead, they found themselves under attack with angry feedback calling for everything from a boycott of all Remington products (a pair of Remington execs were mentioned as having been with Zumbo on his now ill-fated hunting trip) to cancellation of Outdoor Life magazine subscriptions and campaigns against all companies with connections to Zumbo.

Yesterday morning, responding to an onslaught of negative publicity, Remington CEO and President Tommy Millner released a statement severing "all sponsorship ties with Mr. Zumbo, effective immediately."

Zumbo was entitled to his opinion, Millner wrote, but the inflammatory comments were solely his and did not reflect the views of Remington.

"Remington has spent tens of millions of dollars defending our Second Amendment rights to privately own and possess firearms, " wrote Millner, "and we will continue to vigorously fight to protect these rights. As hunters and shooters of all interest levels, we should strive to utilize this unfortunate occurrence to unite as a whole in support of our Second Amendment rights."

In conclusion, Millner expressed regret at the termination of a long-standing relationship with a "well-respected writer and life-long hunter."

Outdoor Life announced they were discontinuing the "Hunting With Zumbo" blog "for the time being" due to the "controversy surrounding Jim Zumbo's latest postings."

Their notice went on to remind readers "Outdoor Life has always been, and will always be, a steadfast supporter of our Second Amendment rights which do not make distinctions based on the looks of the firearms we choose to own, shoot and take hunting."

Yesterday, anyone who didn't comment risked being lumped in with anti-gun forces. Any voices calling for reason and tolerance found themselves shouted down. And those writers professing support for Mr. Zumbo privately certainly weren't willing to go on the record with that support.

Additionally, Cabela's has not yet dropped their sponsorship of the Jim Zumbo Outdoors television show, Cabela's Frank Ross is being quoted as having said their legal department is "currently reviewing contractual obligations and commitments regarding our sponsorship of the Jim Zumbo Outdoors television show. "

"Jim's comments are as unfortunate as they are inappropriate," said National Shooting Sports Foundation president Doug Painter. "No one should divide firearms into good-gun, bad-gun categories."

Zumbo's ill-considered blog may not have been intended to create good-gun, bad-gun categories, but it has certainly raised firebrand rhetoric to an art form. Rather than hunters being supported by recreational and competitive shooting enthusiasts, they have now become "Fudds" to shooters who feel they have been labeled "terrorists" by a "hard-core hunter."

It's truly not a pretty picture, but may observers say it accurately reflects a widening gap between "traditional" and "non-traditional" shooting enthusiasts.

With Congress reconsidering the Assault Weapon Ban and Connecticut and New Jersey considering legislation that would limit handgun purchases to one per month, this latest schism is already being used as further evidence of the "need" to regulate firearms -all firearms - more stringently.

[archy]

Guns ONLY are covered by the Second Amendment, NOT MISSLES, NOT PLANES, NOT TANKS, NOT NUCLEAR WEAPONS, NOT BAZOOKAS.

All those weapons are NOT something the Second Amendment allows people to personally own.

Wrong. The constitution most certainly protects heavy ordnance, since it allows the outfitting of vessels with the necessary weapons to be carried to enforce constitutionally-approved letters of marque and reprisal, as specifically authorized by Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the US Constitution:

But the express power "to grant letters of marque and reprisal" may not have been thought wholly unnecessary, because it is often a measure of peace, to prevent the necessity of a resort to war. Thus, individuals of a nation sometimes suffer from the depredations of foreign potentates; and yet it may not be deemed either expedient or necessary to redress such grievances by a general declaration of war. Under such circumstances the law of nations authorizes the sovereign of the injured individual to grant him this mode of redress, whenever justice is denied to him by the state, to which the party, who has done the injury, belongs. In this case the letters of marque and reprisal (words used as synonymous, the latter (reprisal) signifying, a taking in return, the former (letters of marque) the passing the frontiers in order to such taking,) contain an authority to seize the bodies or goods of the subjects of the offending state, wherever they may be found, until satisfaction is made for the injury.

Though Letters of Marque were abolished by the April 16, 1856 Declaration of Paris, an annex to the 1856 Treaty of Paris that ended the Crimean War, The United States was one of the main nations not to ratify the Declaration- and Congress could repudiate any policies or treaties to the contrary and reestablish such policies.

And if you think that's unlikely nowadays, you've not been paying attention to the use of Private Military Contractors in the Global War on Terror; the mining of oil carrier routes in the Straits of Hormuz is but one act that could see naval contractors join their efforts of their land-based brethren.

[Wonder Warthog]

"All those weapons are NOT something the Second Amendment allows people to personally own."

Oh, but they ARE. Read some history. Lots of private individuals during the Revolution and for years after owned the period equivaled of (at least) Navy destroyers, if not full-bore battleships---including the equivalent of the "big guns".

[arthurus]

You are imposing your own private definitions on the Constitution. You are not a Constitutionalist. The document does NOT say only those arms that someone thinks appropriate to a militia. It says that a militia being necessary, the RKBA shall not be infringed. At the time there were warships and artillery in private ownership and privateers on the sea constituted "militia" just as much as squads of farmers with muskets. And if Constitutional rights are limited to contemporary practice and technology then it would not be unconstitutional for the government to strictly regulate speech on telephones or to deny permission to use telephones to classes of people.Perhaps speech using words not current before 1800 would be a legitimate target of government regulation or prohibition. If you believe in the Constitution and Constitutionalism you have to accept what is actually in the Constitution, not your own take on what should be in it. There is actually a Constitutional mechanism for changing the Constitution. Any other method is capricious negation of the Constitution.

[arthurus]

I also do not support private ownership of those things but there are barriers to such ownership that have nothing to do with the Constitution. One is that while the RKBA is not to be infringed that does not mean there is any right to capriciously shoot your neighbor or gas him either. Another is cost. Have you priced a 50 Kiloton bomb lately? And suppose IBM decided to purchase a Virginia-class submarine, what do you suppose that would do to IBM's profitability and its ability to remain in business?

[archy]

"All those weapons are NOT something the Second Amendment allows people to personally own."

Oh, but they ARE. Read some history.

Even more recent: read the ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on the Military Commissions Act, which had the purpose of overturning the Hamdan decision of the Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals rules that the MCA voiding of the habeas corpus petitions by denying jurisdiction is legitimate.

Which brings up an interesting point:

The Supreme Court rejected the proposition “that the Fifth Amendment confers rights upon all persons, whatever their nationality, wherever they are located and whatever their offenses,” 339 U.S. at 783.
The Court continued: “If the Fifth Amendment confers its rights on all the world . . . [it] would mean that during military occupation irreconcilable enemy elements, guerrilla fighters, and ‘werewolves’ could require the American Judiciary to assure them freedoms of speech, press, and assembly as in the First Amendment, right to bear arms as in the Second, security against ‘unreasonable’ searches and seizures as in the Fourth, as well as rights to jury trial as in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.”

http://pubcrawler.blogspot.com/2007/02/interesting-bit-on-2nd-amendment.html

[DBrow]

"I don't have much respect for a hunter who uses an assault weapon to kill an animal.

Hunting should not be easy, but be about skill and challenge. "

What is it about an "assault weapon" that removes the skill and challenge?

Is it the flash hider or bayonet lug that takes the game out of it?

(I'm hinting that you do not know at all what an assault weapon is, or what makes it different from another firearm).

[DBrow]

"But, should assault weapons be banned? No, for once we do that, where does it stop? The Second Amendment includes all arms."

With you 24/7 365 on that!

[DBrow]

I've posted versions of this that apparently nobody reads, so I'll post it again:

.................

The constitution allows you to raise a private military force and arm it (it has been done before under the constitution and legally, though that right has been modified by treaty).

The second amendment means that the government cannot restrict how you arm your private military force.

Back a hundred fifty years if you asked for permission congress would let you get a ship and arm it with whatever you could afford and go after the bad guys. Today, I doubt you will run across too many who know how that process works.

But imagine that you were allowed to arm a ship, but only with rifles and pistols and knives, and sail out on the bonnie blue to do battle? That's absurd. Or to arm a Beech Bonanza with a 1911 .45 and go get a MIG or two. Good luck!

The constitution and the amendments are written so that the government cannot restrict your choice of weapons, and so that yo will never need to rely on that government for protection civil or military; plus, as the declaration of Independence clearly states, the people are expected to have the ability to overthrow the government by force if it comes to that.

Nothing in the Constitution limits or even defines what "arms" are. The Supremes said in Miller that a short-barreled shotgun was not suited as a "military weapon" so Miller had no second amendment right to own one- that's as close as you'll get, and the Supremes were wrong as they used 16" shotguns in WW I.

[rwfromkansas]

Hmm...interesting point.

[rwfromkansas]

Well frankly, maybe I am wrong. If private individuals owned these things, then obviously they are included in the Second Amendment and should not be banned.

[Wonder Warthog]

"If private individuals owned these things, then obviously they are included in the Second Amendment and should not be banned."

They did. Even later, into the "clipper ship" era and into the Civil War, those vessels WERE armed, as the USA at that time did NOT have a global naval reach, and piracy, especially around southeast Asia, was rampant.

But a great deal of what our forefathers took for granted as freedoms have been taken from us, and the process is still ongoing (and accelerating in some cases).

[archy]

Another is cost. Have you priced a 50 Kiloton bomb lately?

Just 50 KT? Haven't read this, have you? You've clearly never heard of Dave Hahn.

[archy]

I don't have much respect for a hunter who uses an assault weapon to kill an animal.

I took a German Roe deer of about 65 pounds with my Army-issued M14 rifle- with full-auto selector switch, as I'd just come back from a border tour along the *Iron Curtain* 5-km Zone, in 1967.

Admittedly, the German Jagdmeister who administered the shooting test for our jagdschein looked a little askance, and even commented: Mein Gott! Eine machinegewehr! And his were not the only eyebrows raised.

And then they noticed: no magazine. I didn't need one, as I knew exactly what that rifle, with those sights, my finger, and match ammo would do, right out to 600 meters- and we were only shooting at 75, 100, and 150 meters. The soft-point Hirtenberger sporting ammo we'd be using in the field was not off by much, and after I fired my eight shots- on eight seperate targets- the old man patted me on the head and said "Gut. Zehr gut!"

Yeah, I got my deer. From a tree stand, from about 45 meters.

[GunRunner]

Stand corrected; thanks for the info.

You seem pretty interested in military hardware history, have you ever seen this thing? Ekranoplan

[GunRunner]

I also do not support private ownership of those things but there are barriers to such ownership that have nothing to do with the Constitution.

Your language is confusing. You say you don't support ownership of those things, yet you say that said ownership could not be constitutionally prohibited? Aren't you by your own language going against the Constitution?

Price is a barrier for most, but there are defintely some people who could pay the few million dollars for a low yield nuke. Could they claim 2A protection for owning a weapon of mass destruction? I say no, nuclear weapons are not part of the 2nd Amendment.

[DBrow]

Thanks. And, a poster a few posts up has the correct view, I was wrong- Letters of Marque were abolished internationally in 1895 (Treaty of Paris iirc) but the US is NOT a signatory (I thought we were) so the "build your own force" provision is still in force.

So let's go ask Nancy Pelosi for a Letter...

[philman_36]

...though that right has been modified by treaty).
Read #261 and learn..The United States was one of the main nations not to ratify the Declaration...

[philman_36]

I see you did read it. Sorry.

[arthurus]

Hardly. I don't have to like something to accept and support that there is a right to it. I don't much like carrots but I do not support a law against selling, possessing, or eating carrots. Oh No! that's not the same thing as an H-Bomb!! It's not the same thing as a snowplow, either, or a pair of shoes.

[arthurus]

If nukes are not "part of the second amendment" because you don't like them then assault rifles aren't part of it because Nancy Pelosi doesn't like them. And black powder rifles aren't part of the 2nd amendment because Teddy Kennedy doesn't like them. Private interpretation of the Constitution is asinine.