Jim Zumbo.
The Journal Review posts an editorial about Zumbo’s screw-up, his apology, and their opinion of all of the above. (Article by Brent Wheat)
The point of the article?
I think the class was a big success, measured by the grin on Zumbo’s face as he stood ankle-deep in smoking shell casings after shooting a machinegun. I honestly believe he walked away with a better understanding that no one in the shooting world should be thrown off the bus when it comes to gun control issues.
I believe in Jim’s conversion. Hopefully now, instead of wasting time kicking a dead horse on internet chat boards, some of the critics can spend a few minutes flexing their political muscle in support of the Second Amendment.
So we have a guy who started out demonizing “black rifles”. He then realized what a faux pas he made and apologized (likely because he lost his job). Then he decided to go out there and actually shoot the gun to find out what the fuss was about. Now he’s converted.
I’d say that’s a good ending to the story, wouldn’t you?
It doesn’t change what he said or did, but let’s just give the guy the benefit of the doubt and accept him into the ranks. When you make that many public apologies, you’re doubly-screwed if you ever turn your back again.
August 15th, 2007 at 11:46 am
[…] like we have a good ending to the Jim Zumbo controversy. Now when is someone going to give him back a column so he can talk to hunters about this side of […]
August 15th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I’ve got no beef with him now. Hopefully he can educate a few Fudd’s about what the second amendment really protects.
August 15th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Unfortunately, Wheat continues with the divisive elitism with his remark:
I don’t think it helps bridge the gulf for sporters on chef-catered shoots to perpetuate the stereotype that prudent Americans taking personal protective measures because of real threats–internal and external–that could very well bring this nation to its knees, should be ridiculed as kooks.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
To hell with him.
Look: this was an appalling failure of conceptual faculty. This man was simply too stupid to think his way through the political implications of this entire subject, and I am not about to believe that the simple sensation of playing with full-auto has corrected that debility.
The stakes are simply too high to indulge him.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
As I have said before. I will forgive him if he convinces me that he is so stupid that after 40 years as a gun and hunting writer he didn’t know what the second amendment was about? Until he does that I will believe he thought he could throw me under the bus and when the bus ran over him instead, he started hollering, “I didn’t mean it.”
First he must prove his stupidity for forgiveness, at least for mine.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Frankly, if he turns around and says ANYTHING against gun owners’ rights now, he’s worse off than he was before – that’s what I already said in the post. So if you don’t want to “forgive” him, great – you don’t have to. You can just ignore him. He’s gone on-record in several places saying that he was a dumbass and that he’s sorry for what he said. He’s “corrected” his ignorance by going out and trying the gun he was demonizing.
What more do you want? If you don’t want to forgive him, then just ignore him.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
“What more do you want?”
I “want” to know that he understands rights. Do you understand? This is something that goes far beyond a “Wow, this is really cool!” response of his perceptual capacity overwhelming his cool distaste for a different sort of hardware than previously fitted his own personal style.
I don’t give a clap-ridden fuck if he thinks these weapons are fun, now. That’s irrelevant. I still don’t have a reason to believe that he understands what he did.
And from the look of it, I think a lot of others don’t, either.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
In my experience, it takes an admiration of something to push someone into wanting to research it. If him having fun with shooting a weapon is what it takes to push him into respecting the law and the right to bear arms (ALL facets of it, not just his personal preference), then so be it. You don’t have to totally agree with him, and as I’ve repeated SEVERAL times, if he goes into “holier-than-thou” mode again, he’s going to get ripped a new asshole, anyway.
There’s no need to get nasty with me, or with anyone else here.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
[…] am not interested to give Jim Zumbo a break. He either earns my respect with the application of his mind, or he and his baby-sitters can go […]
August 15th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Right. Well, if he’d been able to influence the passage of laws that would have made me a criminal for owning an SKS, to where would I have been able to appeal for “forgiveness”. Nowhere, that’s where.
He’s contrite because he failed, and he’s scrambling for a livelihood. To hell with Zumbo.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
To begin with, what you’re calling “nasty” is simply a matter of my expressive style, and believe me: you ain’t seen “nasty” yet.
To the principle issue at hand; let me put it to you this way: I never once set foot in a Nazi death camp. I didn’t have to in order to grasp the evil in them in concept.
Essentially, you’re talking about a man whose mind is so crippled that he couldn’t deal in concepts like a principle of private property — a general proposition that includes Evil Black Rifles — without actually taking on in hand, which is something he wasn’t inclined to do anyway before he got his ass in a sling behind them. This is like dealing with a child’s epistemology: it is entirely sub-conceptual. You’re talking about a man who just could not think his way through the thing.
This is intolerable in a person of his experience and interest. Intolerable.
Now; I do imagine that I’m boring everyone to pieces with this argument, but it’s crucially important. Jumping up and down with sudden glee on the range in no way demonstrates — certainly not to me — that he’s got his mind right on the politics of the matter, and if there is anyone who doubts that that is the essential thing about this case, then those people simply don’t really know what’s going on with it.
August 15th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
You know, I think it all boils down to this:
Zumbo was tired and not paying attention at the end of a day when he got stupid. Had you asked him he would have stood tall and told you that of course he was a staunch support of the Second Amendment.
The problem was that, from his long-time elite hunter perspective he’d never actually considered ARs & AKs as ‘guns’ – or at least not real ones.
Once he found himself in the blazing light of a million angry eyes he was at first just confused. Then once he realized what he’d actually said I believe he was appalled. If you haven’t said or done something that you yourself later found unexcusable then you must be really young. In Zumbo’s case he did it right out in front of God and everyone. If he’d done it around the right campfire he’d have gotten his slapdown and correction in private (and in others agreement, unfortunately).
Heck, anyone here who thinks everyone should have a gun? No matter how crazy, stupid, or criminal they may be? I agree with David Codrea that if someone can’t be trusted with a gun they probably shouldn’t be walking around unsupervised, but I can see how you could easily say something that you intended to be the same thing but that came out with the words “reasonable restrictions” or “qualified owners”. That quote, possibly even in context, could be just the sort of thing the Brady’s would plaster all over the top of their website.
He’s said – and others have backed up – that he could have just slunk off into the night. He’s had his retirement set up for years. It wasn’t the money that kept him in the spotlight, it was his reputation and memory he’s been fighting to save.
His value now is in bridging the gap between the ‘Fudds’ and the ‘gun nuts’.
So yeah, forgive him or ignore him, the time has come to move on.
August 15th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Steve, you said it so much more eloquently than I ever could. Thank you.
August 15th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
I don’t really care what Zumbo does or doesn’t understand. He can reach a lot of hunters. If he can convince them that people who use AR-15’s and other black rifles are ordinary, mainstream folks, and that if they want hunting to survive too, then they need to fight for our rights as hard as if they were fighting for their own deer rifles, it’ll be a victory. The evil “assault weapon” of the early 90s is going mainstream. How is that bad for gun owners? If Zumbo isn’t really a true believer, I could care less. The big question is my mind is can he carry the message. If that’s the case, great. He’s been working hard to mend things with gun owners. I think he deserves a second chance.
August 15th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
If the time has come to “move on” (in a phrase so ardently coined by Democrats, so many years ago with a .org at the back end of it), then why do people keep posting about this guy?
August 15th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
“I think he deserves a second chance.”
Maybe, right after he demonstrates an understanding of the 2nd Amendment and that no where in it does it mention hunting.
Just maybe he can reach the hunters that think that anyone who owns anything that doesn’t fit their conceptualizations of what a firearm should be can be dismissed as misfits, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
August 15th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Zumbo wanting to be forgiven is like someone wanting to be excused because when they tried to stab you in the back, they slipped on a bar of soap and stuck themselves instead.
What do you want to give him a “second chance” for? So that he can take another stab at you again?
August 15th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Billy;
I should think the answer to that question patently obvious;
They share his appalling failure of conceptual faculty, (I think without realizing it), probably without ever having thought the matter through themselves. In short, neither Zumbo, nor his apologists, are operating from the principle of the thing.
August 17th, 2007 at 1:59 am
I hunt because it is a chance to use my guns. I’m a shooter that hunts. I’m a “gun guy”. Now take moment to understand that few COPS are “gun guys”. The firearm is simply one more thing to go on the duty belt. Why is this relevant? Because like cops, few hunters are “gun guys”. They only own the gun because they use it to hunt. I’m not a “car guy” but I have a car to drive to work. MOST hunters are like that with guns.
Most hunters do not understand the right to own arms or the need to protect them. But the listen to Zumbo. It does not matter if Zumbo sees the Second Amendment as a Right or as a Need. He protects it just the same!
The point is this. We are NOW after the same goal. That puts us on the same side.
Unless anyone else what to throw a fellow “pro-gunner” under the bus…
August 20th, 2007 at 2:08 am
What I want to know is did dumbo pay his own way or am I supposed to pay for his re education? He called me a terrorist. Unless dumbo’s sponsers made him pay his own way then myself and every gun owner in America is paying for his education. He is a clueless Elmer Fudd.
August 20th, 2007 at 8:43 am
John – According to the government in several states, people who support the Constitution at all are terrorists. At least this guy had SOME sort of idea that violent activity is a requirement of “terrorist activity” – he just got the weapon and purpose totally wrong. Yeah, that totally makes him an ignorant ass. I just think that it’s good that he crawled out of his own asshole long enough to at least try the gun out. Whether that turns him around or not, it’s a lot more than some people would do.