A Well Reasoned and Knowledgeable Analysis on Cheney Incident

Lapse a blessing for hunter safety

Phil Bloom
Fort Wayne Indiana
The Journal Gazette

The way Steve Hall sees it, something good can come from Vice President Cheney’s hunting accident.

“We couldn’t have paid the vice president to give us this much publicity,” said Hall, director of the hunter education program in Texas and former president of the International Hunter Education Association. “Because he is a high-visibility figure, it actually elevates the importance and awareness of the hunter education effort that has a long-standing history.”

In peppering his hunting partner with birdshot Saturday, Cheney became the first vice president to shoot someone since Aaron Burr mortally wounded Alexander Hamilton in a pistol duel July 11, 1804.

Burr’s was no accident. Cheney’s was.

From the perspective of someone who has hunted, the explanation Cheney gave Wednesday in an interview with Fox News seems plausible.

That does not absolve him of wrongdoing, and he rightfully took the blame for what happened.

Cheney was wrong not because he inconvenienced the White House press corps or because he didn’t call police immediately. In fact, there is no statutory requirement in Texas – or Indiana – to report a hunting accident. Hospitals, on the other hand, are required to report gunshot victims to law enforcement agencies, which then investigate the circumstances and determine responsibility.

Cheney’s mistake was in violating the cardinal rules of safe hunting that Hall and thousands of other hunter education instructors teach their students – point a gun only in a safe direction, treat every firearm as if it is loaded, and be sure of your target.

“What that carries with it is seeing what is in front and what is beyond the intended target,” Hall said.

The accident report filed by a game warden shows that both Cheney and Whittington were wearing blaze orange clothing – caps and coats or vests – though Texas law does not require it on private land where they were hunting.

Blaze orange serves a purpose. Wearing it makes you stick out like a sore thumb.
So, how could Cheney have not seen his hunting partner?

There is a term in hunter safety education classes that likely played a role. It’s called target fixation and means visually locking onto the intended target.

“Especially in quail hunting, where the hunter is so focused on the bird that it makes everything else blurry,” Hall said. “The bottom line in terms of bird hunting is what we call shooting zones.”

While Cheney is to blame for the shooting, Whittington facilitated the accident by stepping out of the line of hunters to retrieve a downed bird and then rejoining the group without alerting the others.

And that, as they say, "is the truth of it." Cheney is to blame, as he himself has stated in the interview on FOX. No one is denying that. But it does help to understand what is occurring when people hunt, it is not "target fever" as some third party experts have alledged (a third party expert is one who has "heard from someone he knows who is a hunter" and as a result becomes an instant expert), but a well known and normal process in bird hunting. This doesn't alleviate Cheney from responsibility, merely provides a reasoned and logical understanding of how accidents like this one occur.

Therein lies the problem with all of these Liberals who are making wild accusations against the Vice President, they know nothing about guns (except they ought to be outlawed) and they know nothing about hunting (except it ought to be outlawed). Kind of like most of the freedoms Americans enjoy but with which they disapprove.

Full Story: Hunting Safety

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