It takes a real man to shoot trapped and caged animals for the pure fun of killing. Real men like former NRA Executive Director John Sigler who was photographed participating in a canned pigeon hunt at the Philadelphia Gun Club in Bensalem, PA in 2012. The caged pigeons, tossed into the air and shot by he-men, are not killed for food but "rather for the hunting equivalent of dog-fighting," says the Daily Kos . They are left "to die agonizingly over the course of hours and days," as disturbing videos show.
Live
pigeon shoots like the one at the Philadelphia Gun Club thrive in Pennsylvania.
District attorneys "regularly block attempts by humane officers to file
cruelty charges for the inhumane treatment of wounded birds," reports the Philadelphia
Inquirer because
the club and hunt sponsors and fans are so well connected politically. Sigler,
for example, is the head of the Delaware Republican Party.
Of
course the poster child for thrill killing is former Vice President Dick
Cheney. Cheney did not have to plead for an organ transplant to save his life
like 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan; he received one last year, "because my
heart had gotten so weak after six heart attacks and 30-some years of heart disease
that it was, you know, it was at the end," he told the
press. Of course many
contend he never had a heart. But Cheney's reprieve thanks to someone who died
has not given him new reverence for life. In fact, it has inspired him to
indulge in his favorite pastime.
The
Denver Post
reports the Veep will participate in Wyoming's One Shot Antelope Hunt in
September. The event is a duel between Wyoming and Colorado and "the team
that kills the most antelope in the shortest time wins," says the Associated
Press . Nice.
While
some defend hunting as more honest than eating food from factory farm
conditions, not Dick Cheney style hunting. The nation still laughs at how
Cheney shot his companion, attorney Harry Whittington, in the face instead of
shooting a quail in 2006. But Cheney's love of put-and-take or canned hunting
is hardly funny. Even hunters agree it is as brave as hitting women and
children.
In
2003, Cheney's hunting party killed 417 pheasants at the Rolling Rock Club in
Ligonier Township, PA; Cheney personally killed 70 pheasants and an
undisclosed number of ducks. Three years later, Cheney headed to Clove Valley
Rod & Gun Club in a caravan of 15 sport utility vehicles--with an
ambulance--at a local-taxpayer cost of $32,000. Nor was this Cheney's ï rst
visit to the 4,000-acre club, which costs $150,000 a year to join and features a male-only clubhouse.
Gun-club
staff would not divulge whether the Veep was shooting pheasants, ducks or the
"Hungarian partridges," the club advertises, but a New York Daily News photographer snapped a photo of a Confederate ï "ag displayed in a Clove Valley
Rod & Gun Club garage. What? Racism and gun extremism linked?
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