The WAG THE DOG Manifesto!

[mnshooter]

Zumbo didn't fall under the bus.  He waved the bus down and then chose to jump under it rather than onto it.

[canon6]

I am glad that  we are all on the same page on this one,we need to contact all of our elected officials and keep the positive pressure on them,if they stray then the pressure must become immense and immediate   Doug

[Jerry The Geek]

Zumbo isn't a 'moron', as somebody or other suggested.

He was just the product of his times.

My own father, "Pop", would have agreed with him.

Born in 1911, Pop started hunting alone before he reached his teen years.  He got his family through the depression with deer, poached with a Winchester '98 in 30-30.  I still have it in the closet, right here [tap-tap]

When I started shooting IPSC in '83, I showed him what 'combat pistol shooting' was about.  He wasn't impressed. He would have been more impressed with Jeff Cooper's "There ain't much that a man can't fix, with seven hundred dollars and a thirty-ought-six".

Pop started waking me up at 5am to go hunting when I was 12, and for the next 30 years we spent a lot of lovely weekends together not worrying much about whether we got meat.  (I don't think I ate beef at home until I moved out on my own.)  He custom-built rifles, usually war-surplus 1903-A3 Springfields, and I always had a beautifully stocked bespoke gun.  My favorites were a 30-06 with  a Rock Maple stock (he sold it out from under me in 1963, the scoundrel) and a 25-06 on the A3 frame in another beautiful blond maple ... which he built for my mother, but I inherited (and still have!) when she decided she didn't like to "kill Bambi".

Pop thought of rifles when he thought of guns.  He only owned two handguns; a 1911 Colt and a Ruger Blackhawk in .41 Magnum when we decided to hunt Antelope with handguns.  We never hit one, but we sure had a lot of fun working up the hunting load and trying to mount a 2x Burris scope on his Ruger so that the recoil wouldn't break the scope loose from the mounts.  When he finally managed a firm mount (using gooey gobs of glass-bedding compound), the cross-hairs broke loose after a half-dozen sighting shots.

He never saw an M16, but I used one for a while in Vietnam.  We both considered them "poodle-shooters" although we had never heard the term in those early years.  For my father, a rifle was a work of art.  One of his hunting pals teased him about his fancy rifles, eliciting from Pop a Perfect Squelch:  "Some folks drive Fords, some folks drive Cadillacs."  At the time, he was breaking in a 7mm Magnum that he had built on a Sako action, having decided that the 6.5 x 55 just wasn't exciting enough, and the .338 was too exciting because he had to put a Muller Muzzle Brake on it so he could shoot it.  (My ears are still ringing.)

The point is, his generation had a very strict definition of a "hunting rifle".  It was probably a bolt-action, because he always shot hot loads.  It was of a caliber specific to the game he was hunting.  I almost fainted when he toyed with a composite stock for his planned hut in Alaska, but he was right because he came back with a mountain goat and a moose.  I guess he knew what it took Robert Ruark a few Africa-years to learn: Use Enough Gun.

And the poodle-shooters didn't do it.  When you shoot ground-hogs at 400 yards with a 22-250 under a 10X Leupold, the 5.56 M16 doesn't show you much.

So I know where Zumbo was coming from.  He came from the "Bob The Nailer" generation.  One shot, one kill ... no real man needed a semi-automatic and besides, those suckers are butt-ugly.

It was hubris that brought Zumbo down.  He thought he knew everything there was to know about hunting, and that this was all anyone needed to know about shooting.

I'm sure he'll be very happy in his new career clerking in Jim's Gun Shop.

Darn shame, that.

[DonWorsham]

I read this twice. Damn nice, Jerry. Thanks.

[Kilroy]

At one time I thought of Zumbo as well spoken and considerate.  I was wrong.  He is not.  His opinion of certain firearms and their owners leaked out.  He made it public.  He called names that were not deserved or needed.  While the power of the internet becomes obvious, it's more important to note that this difference between types of gun owners is going to be used against us all.  We all have to watch what we say and do, as the "other" side is waiting to seize on any misstep.

In this new communication age, we have the chance to use information to our advantage, or disadvantage.

What would have happened to Ruger, if the Internet had been available when Bill the Elder produced his "how and why" letter on banning firearms and "high capacity feeding devices?'

[Sponsor]

[fatdog]

What would have happened to Ruger, if the Internet had been available when Bill the Elder produced his "how and why" letter on banning firearms and "high capacity feeding devices?'

Interesting question.  If I am remembering right, he put that out before the ban, when a lot of us were not clearly seeing it, or what it would mean to us.  I do think that what happened to Zumbo was not soley a product of the internet age.  A great deal of it is pent up anger and emotion from people like me who lived through the ban, never thought it would end, and now will fight with every dime, every calorie of energy, every word we can utter, every boycott we can threaten to stop those who would bring it back.  I have NOTHING but contempt for those who want to see the AWB back in any form.  Those people are just as big an enemy of mine as Sarah Brady could ever hope to be.

[dhowser]

Over on the Outdoor Life website, www.outdoorlife.com/outdoor/ , there is a note that Outdoor Life and Jim Zumbo have parted ways.

[Michael Bane]

Jerry...

Very well put (and I certainly expect no less from you!). It could have been my father as well. I have spent a lot ot time talking to a good friend of mine at OL, and they did the right thing in allowing him to resign.

I am putting together a piece that tries to stitch some of the pieces back together and maybe give a little better understanding on the gulf between shooters and hunters and how we might go abut mending it. I'll publish it here, of course.

I thnk the most important lesson learned by the industry — ALL of the industry — is that it is no longer acceptable to 'dis any group, period. It's an enforced lesson in hang together or hand separately!

Michael B

[Lawrence Keeney]

His career is over pretty much..It died from an acute case of Fuddism.

Seriously though..I figure he was a life long democrat, and since it's apparenty open season on all republicans and conservatives. he figured it was cool now to spewish his Fuddish belief and anti second amendment prejudices.

It's a shame, but he made his bed, let him sleep in it from now on.

[Pathfinder]

I am putting together a piece that tries to stitch some of the pieces back together and maybe give a little better understanding on the gulf between shooters and hunters and how we might go abut mending it. I'll publish it here, of course.

Michael -

I think I can safely say we are all looking forward to your article. Any education here (for me) will be nothing less than valuable.

My reference to "Moron" to which Jerry alluded was a reflection of my frustration with people - who should know much, much better - just not seeming to be able to grasp the realities in which we ALL live. With his background in hunting and firearms and the industry, Zumbo should have known - for a certainty - that his comments were and would be nothing less than counter-productive. The fact that he did not, his self-enforced ignorance, is inexcusable. It's one thing for your Dad or grandfather who is a hunter to not understand. But Zumbo? Not acceptible at all, as he is finding out.

I have hunted - mostly coyotes in eastern Wyoming oddly enough given that's where Zumbo's troubles began - but do not consider myself primarily a hunter. I am a shooter. I do not own a Remington 700. But I would never, on my worst day, ever disparage the 700 in print, nor would I attack their owners the way Zumbo attacked the owners of black rifles. What he did was equivalent (to me at least) of calling the 700 a ugly rifle and a sniper's weapon and should not be owned by anyone outside the military.

Thank you all for your insights and enlightenment into the "other" side of shooting sports with which I am admittedly not overly familiar.

So, Michael, we all wait eagerly for your thoughts. In the meantime, if I can get back home for any length of time, I think I need to do some politicing with my local gun club, which I am sad to say probably falls on the Zumbo side of the discussion.