Two Hundred And Fifty Words
NY TIMES: Editorial - OverkillPublished: March 3, 2007
A famous hunter and outdoorsman recently voiced misgivings about people who use assault rifles to kill prairie dogs.
Everyone knows what a prairie dog is: a chubby North American rodent that lives in a communal burrow and grows to be about a foot long. “Assault rifle” is a much touchier term. It is generally understood to be the kind of gun that soldiers use in wars and terrorists use on the evening news. But the gun lobby despises “assault rifle,” considering it a false, scary label tacked onto perfectly legitimate weapons by people who want to take away others’ rights.
That is a debate for another day. The question for now is whether the hunter, Jim Zumbo, deserved what he got after he wrote on his blog that hunters should shun what he called assault rifles — semiautomatics like the AR-15, a cousin of the M-16, and civilian knockoffs of the AK-47. “Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist,” he wrote, “but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity.” He added: “To most of the public, an assault rifle is a terrifying thing. Let’s divorce ourselves from them. I say game departments should ban them from the prairies and woods.”
Until he wrote that, Mr. Zumbo was one of the most admired hunters in America, a widely read magazine writer with his own cable TV program and lots of lecture appearances and corporate sponsorships. He of all people should have known that “ban” is the mother of all fighting words to gun zealots. His 250-word posting caused a huge eruption on gun blogs, and Mr. Zumbo instantly became their second-most-hated man, after the gun-control advocate James Brady. Even though Mr. Zumbo quickly disavowed his words and apologized, he lost his blog, was dumped by Outdoor Life magazine and was disowned by the National Rifle Association, after 40 years of membership. His corporate sponsors, including the gunmaker Remington, ditched him. His cable show was canceled. The N.R.A. issued a chilling statement warning Congress to take heed of Mr. Zumbo’s fate. By the time Blaine Harden told his story in The Washington Post, Mr. Zumbo was professionally dead.
The paranoia and gloating that Mr. Zumbo’s name has evoked on gun discussion boards like ar15.com and freerepublic.com speak for themselves. You will find only a handful of postings suggesting cautiously that the overnight destruction of a man’s career might not be the proudest moment for the advocates of gun rights. One or two say that instead of cementing their reputations for reflexively enshrining gun ownership above everything, they might have asked Mr. Zumbo what he was talking about. They might even have had a healthy debate. But they shot first.
Labels: blogging, gun, gun control, hunting, jim zumbo, nra, ny times, opinion, outdoor life, politics
posted by Jeff Pidgeon at
12:37 AM
4 Comments:
Let me put it to you this way. Let's say the Pope wakes up one day and decides to blog that there's no place in Catholicism for the New Testament. The Old Testament is good enough for everyone. How would Catholics react? Mr. Zumbo has been in the hunting business a LONG time and knew, or should have known how his opinion would be received. He got a little too big for his britches and found out the hard way how painful that can be. There are PLENTY of people out there trying to nullify the Second Amendment, we don't need an insider helping them. Caveat Blogger!
I can't say for sure what Mr. Zumbo's motives were, but I don't think he was trying to nullify the second amendment. I think he had an opinion on a very specific firearm.
I don't think it was necessary to obliterate his entire career because he voiced an unpopular opinion. The right to free speech is at least as important as the right to bear arms.
I've been following the commentary on this topic around the blogosphere. You are hardly the only person to have decided that Jim Zumbo's First Amendment right to freedom of speech was violated.
The ignorance of this statement frightens me.
Mr. Zumbo's First Amendment right was not violated. He is free - right now - to express that very same opinion, albeit to a much smaller audience.
The Bill of Rights does not protect people from the consequences of their own actions. It tells the government what it is prohibited from doing. Period.
Mr. Zumbo expressed an opinion that angered a very large percentage of the audience he reached. That audience reacted. They told his sponsors that they could expect no further custom so long as Mr. Zumbo acted as their spokesman.
This is known as the free market in action. No First Amendment violation occurred.
But the fact that so many people misunderstand the free speech clause of the First Amendment goes a long way to explain the lack of understanding of the establishment clause, the right to arms and the rest of the Bill of Rights.
Which does not bode well for the future of this Republic.
Zumbo has done more for hunting and gun owners than 99% of the population. I for one would like to see him continue to help hunters across the world. Trump gave Miss USA a second chance and she did not have a 20 years history.
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