Ask the Fox about the Henhouse
December 2, 2004
Ann Coulter once observed that, “Most journalists are so stupid, the fact that they are also catty, lazy, vengeful and humorless is often overlooked.” Someday (perhaps at CPAC 2005) I have to ask her if the NYT’s Fox Butterfield qualifies for a dunce cap. If Butterfield is an example of a Pulitzer Prize winner, I’ll remain content winning at the Sunday turkey shoots.
When 36-year-old Hmong warrior Chai Vang took his walkabout and murdered six Wisconsin hunters this past week, Butterfield felt compelled to let his brilliance shine anew.
In a riveting NYT’s piece of journalism, Rare Weapon to Hunt Deer, Butterfield managed to: (1) never mention anything about Chai Vang; (2) give some free “spin time” to a gun industry lobbyist; and (3) totally misinform his readers.
In fact, Butterfield should become Chai Vang’s defense attorney. According to Butterfield, Vang was not even the murderer...nor was any other human. Just read the article’s first sentence, it was “The rifle that killed five Wisconsin hunters and wounded three more on Sunday,” not Chai Vang. OK everybody, repeat after me...Guns kill, people don’t—Guns kill, people don’t—Guns kill, people don’t.
Butterfield has a history of turning any story into a pitch for gun control. But he does it so stupidly...only equally unconscious liberals pay him any mind. Early on in the Beltway Sniper panic, Butterfield penned an article, DC Area Sniper Appears to be Hunting, in which he astutely noted that the sniper, “...used a hunting or military-style rifle, leaving no shell casings for the police to investigate.” I really expected more from a journalist rumored to have double degrees from Harvard...or maybe not.
That’s the trouble with liberals...they replace definition with dogma. Functional rifle design (especially when it comes to the ejection of spent casings) isn’t categorized as “hunting or military style”. There are automatic rifles, semi-automatic rifle, lever action rifles, bolt action rifles and breech-loading rolling block action rifles. Normally, if you don’t wish to leave a casing behind, it is best to use a bolt action, lever action or rolling block rifle. Of course, you could out-Fox Butterfield and just hide in the car trunk with a semi-automatic.
But these stories are never about the whacko murderer...they are always propaganda to smear the law abiding “gun enthusiast” and his “military-style assault weapon”. And Butterfield panders to his fellow liberal pudding heads. So, he found an “expert” to intimate that the DC sniper might be “a gun enthusiast, who targeted his victims for the thrill of it.” Of course we all discovered that, despite liberal prayers for an NRA member, the DC sniper(s) turned out to be a borderline pedophile Muslim and his “twink”.
In Butterfield’s latest article, the murderer “was an SKS 7.62-millimeter semiautomatic assault weapon not normally used in hunting animals.” Just ask any “expert”. Butterfield drudged-up Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (spelled gun industry lobbyist) to assure us that “This is not a gun you go deer hunting with.”
Keane wants the reader to believe that, “The reason the SKS is not used by hunters is that it is designed for combat soldiers and is therefore underpowered for killing an animal like a deer with a single shot, the goal of good hunters.” Expert Keane (who happens to be a lawyer) suspects that, “...the man accused of the Wisconsin killings was not a trained hunter, since with the SKS he was carrying, he would have had to shoot a deer several times to kill it.” I’m starting to suspect that the only thing Keane has ever hunted hides behind his zipper.
It’s not how big your gun is, it’s how well you use it. Hitting a deer in the lungs with a 7.62 x 39 is as lethal as it gets. The single most-credited caliber for deer kills in the U.S. is the .30-.30 Winchester. The .30-.30 Win. and the 7.62 x 39 have almost identical ballistic characteristics. At 200 yards from the target, the 7.62 x 39 is superior. So why the whitetail lie?
Keane’s Connecticut-based National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is the trade association (Lobby) for a group companies and businesses that make and sell firearms, ammunition and other shooting products. NSSF is strongly allied with Connecticut-based firearms manufacturer Sturm, Ruger & Co. (Ruger). Among other products, Ruger produces the “Ruger Mini Thirty” rifle.
The “Mini Thirty” is described on the Ruger website as “Chambered for the widely accepted 7.62 x 39mm cartridge, the Mini Thirty has proven itself the ideal autoloader for deer-size game at medium ranges.” The “Mini Thirty” sells for $700 - $800. The SKS, whose manufacturers are not represented by the NSSF, typically sells for $100 - $200.
The SKS and the Mini-Thirty are both “Chambered for the widely accepted 7.62 x 39mm cartridge”. The SKS has a superior hunting barrel at 20.34 inches compared to the slightly shorter 18.5 inch Mini-Thirty barrel. They are both magazine-fed semi-automatics. Functionally, just about the only difference between the two rifles is the extra $600 on the Mini-Thirty’s price tag and the opinion of the NYT’s expert...paid Ruger lobbyist Lawrence Keane.
So, what do you get for your buck when you buy the New York Times?
You get a story about a mass murder written as an article on gun control. You get another reminder that “It’s all Bush’s fault” because the article reminds us that “President Bill Clinton barred the importing of Chinese- and Russian-made SKS rifles. But the Bush administration...has specifically authorized the importing of SKS's from Yugoslavia and Albania.” You also get a huge spin from a paid lobbyist disguised as a NYT’s “expert”. Additionally, the nation’s MSM plagiarized (in one form or another) and propagated the disinformation born in the NYT’s. And...you get no useful information.
Geez...even the article’s title, Rare Weapon to Hunt Deer, is wrong. “Rare”? Gun collector Michael Kindberg writes that the, “SKS rifle has emerged to become one of the most popular firearms in the country. It has been estimated that over 7 million SKS rifles have been imported into the US...” The only “rare” thing around here is Butterfield’s half-baked article!
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