Monday, November 22, 2004

Deer hunter murders and the fall out

I’m displeased by some of the coverage of the deer hunter murders in Northern Wisconsin. It started with this AP story, which was written in such a way as to suggest that those hunters who were killed an injured may have started the firing. It was followed by this headline at CBC News: Five killed in shootout among deer hunters. This story is very young yet, but it seems straight forward. The suspect got angry, and started mowing down the victims. Had the victims started the incident, it would seem that the suspect would be seriously injured or dead because the numbers were not in his favor. Instead, he tracked them down through the woods and shot them one by one.

I can see this story spinning wildly away from the facts. Anti gun and anti hunting types are going to jump all over it. It seems CBC News and Joshua Freed at the AP have already started down that path. At work, I’ve already heard one liberal claim that the suspect’s rifle was an automatic assault rifle, which it was not. I’ve heard another liberal claim that if were shot at first, he’d have done the same thing as the suspect. How stupid the buzz around this story could become is yet to be determined, but early indications are that it’ll be very, very stupid if the story has legs.

1 comment:

Drew said...

Oh, I hear ya. Now that we know the facts, of course, the tone of the stories is a little different, but you are not the only one who noticed the original AP reports kept calling it a "hunting dispute." I've seen the repeated phrase "shootout over property rights" or something similar.

But we now learn that the dead and wounded hunters had only one gun among them. And we don't even know if they shot back.

Still, those first impressions have gone around the world. Watch for gun-control advocates to use this incident.