SEATTLE -- 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.
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As I've said many times, I'm not a hunter (don't believe in killing anything that doesn't try to kill me), but I do believe in the right to keep and bear (try breaking into my house and find out about that). I also have a big problem with the NRA and the guys who, many in lieu of military service, have to feel like Sgt. Rock by owning the latest military hardware. Seems this experienced, nationally recognized hunter has been thinking along the same lines. Unfortunately for him, just like the Chicks, he earns his living from these folks.
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"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."
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I'm sure a lot of others feel this way too, but you're unAmerican, in the eyes of the NRA, if you actually say that in a national forum. This poor bastid, an icon of the hunting community has gone from penthouse to pavement in mere days.
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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.
The NRA on Thursday pointed to the collapse of Zumbo's career as an example of what can happen to anyone, including a "fellow gun owner," who challenges the right of Americans to own or hunt with assault-style firearms.
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Excuse me, but assault weapons are just that. They are made to kill people in a theater of war or in police operations. The day I see deer armed with RPGs and bear with AK-47s is the day I'll give my blessing to private citizens having better armament than the local cops.
The NRA is nothing but a wingnut organization whose leadership lives on the far right and are enabled by the gunmakers. Thanks to the NRA and their influence, gun control laws are mostly ineffective in states that have them. I give a fuck what you do in your state, but when these things are bought there (because you don't give a fuck and your reps are scared of the NRA) and trafficked on the streets of NY, I got big problems.
The NRA, gunmakers, and 'enthusiasts' have gotten away with far too much for too long and it's about time one of their own called bullshit. Unfortunately, the poor bastid's ruined.
Update [Sunday morning ... early]:
Our pal (and resident scholar of the American Patriot Institute) Scroff said it quite well a while ago, as he alerted me to in comments (ya old blogwhore ... heh):
... it should be perfectly reasonable for me to own a nuke. I wouldn't use it... I just want to have it, and it's my right as an American Citizen to have one ...
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