Jim Zumbo made a big mistake. And he has paid a price. Zumbo is a famous hunter and hunting advocate. He wrote for Outdoor Life from 1962 up until last week. What did he do? He wrote this on his blog after a long day hunting coyotes on the Remington company’s dime:
“Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons [military-style assault rifles] among our hunting fraternity,” Zumbo wrote in his blog on the Outdoor Life Web site. The Feb. 16 posting has since been taken down. “As hunters, we don’t need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them. . . . I’ll go so far as to call them ‘terrorist’ rifles.”
Oops. Six thousand outraged letters later, Zumbo issued his resignation. Check out how the NRA treated him:
The reaction — from tens of thousands of owners of assault rifles across the country, from media and manufacturers rooted in the gun business, and from the National Rifle Association — has been swift, severe and unforgiving. Despite a profuse public apology and a vow to go hunting soon with an assault weapon, Zumbo’s career appears to be over.
His top-rated weekly TV program on the Outdoor Channel, his longtime career with Outdoor Life magazine and his corporate ties to the biggest names in gunmaking, including Remington Arms Co., have been terminated or are on the ropes.
The NRA on Thursday pointed to the collapse of Zumbo’s career as an example of what can happen to anyone, including a “fellow gun owner,” who challenges the right of Americans to own or hunt with assault-style firearms…
“Our folks fully understand that their rights are at stake,” the NRA statement said. It warned that the “grassroots” passion that brought down Zumbo shows that millions of people would “resist with an immense singular political will any attempts to create a new ban on semi-automatic firearms.”
Never mind that he was a “40-year NRA member and has appeared with NRA officials in 70 cities.” And Remington was no kinder:
Remington chief executive Tommy Millner issued a personal appeal to gun owners who might be thinking about boycotting the company’s products: “Rest assured that Remington not only does not support [Zumbo’s] view, we totally disagree,” Millner said. “I have no explanation for his perspective. I proudly own AR’s and support everyone’s right to do so!”
So what explains this vicious assault on a long-time NRA member and hunting advocate?
Zumbo’s fall highlights a fundamental concern of the NRA and many champions of military-style firearms, according to people who follow the organization closely. They do not want American gun owners to make a distinction between assault weapons and traditional hunting guns such as shotguns and rifles. If they did, a rift could emerge between hunters, who tend to have the most money for political contributions to gun rights causes, and assault-weapon owners, who tend to have lots of passion but less cash.
The Democratic Party has its problems and divisions. But this is ridiculous.
Yup- this is the country fouded on rhetoric, the country that stands for dialog as opposed to violence.
Oh fuck it. The bastard either was a democratic plant, or he was expressing a position that displayed his inability to speak for the majority of god fearing, gun toting ass holes that are in the process of sending this country down into the cesspool.
Lets all practice tolerance- Yeah sure. Fire the fool, go after his family. punish him in every way possible.
I will bet anyone that all he will need is a three week retreat to cure all that ails him!
As a long time subscriber to Outdoor Life I will be demanding he be reinstated or my subscription will be cancelled.
I have been fishing longer than I can even remember, and am a proud liberal. These nut jobs on the right need to be ignored – they do not speak for me or anyone I know.
He’s gone from the magazine. You can cancel if you like, but if you like the magazine I would advise you to send Zumbo a personal note of support instead of cancelling. I’m sure he feels very hurt and would like to hear from someone like you. The magazine is just making a very sensible business decision…unfortunately.
It’s not that simple – I have been a long time subscriber and love the outdoors. My guess is some publishers in NYC got a bunch of letters and panicked. When they get inundated with the onslaught of letters from people like me, they will see the numbers are on my side.
If they don’t, I will cancel without a second thought. I also fish with the fishing editor of OL a couple times a year and will be letting him know how I feel personally.
These assholes are all going to hell. Pride goes before a fall, and all these “individualist” assholes are going to starve to death after the U.S. gets nuked for being such assholes.
I’ve moved into the deep country. I’m surrounded by cow fields and woods and streams. There are several assholes who live within a mile of me who like to go out in the woods on weekends and shoot off their military weapons, typically automatic ARs.
So my wife and I are out walking the dogs and we constantly here this POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-
POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-POW!-
POW! not far away. Assholes!
They trespass on our land and leave spent shells. It’s a wonder they haven’t shot my horses yet, much less me and my family. ASSHOLES!
I’m not talking about hunters. I have no problem with people owning guns. I’m talking about ASSHOLES who dream of having Hummers and drive great big heavily financed Ford F-250 diesels with big spotlights they don’t need and like to go out drunk into the woods and shoot squirrels and birds and cats with automatic assault rifles. Assholes!
I’m a pacifist. But I’m starting to think I need some rapid fire shotguns to protect myself from those assholes, in event of the crises I foresee.
Your assholes might be born out of this:
It took me awhile, with my failing eyes, to get through that paragraph, and then I said Amen.
This conversation here is related to other conversations on this blog tonight about corporate control of the media.
The oligarchy always tries its best to stay hidden.
This is a couple of non sequiturs, but I’m too tired to finish.
Thanks for your excellent comment.
Very deep analysis. I’ve thought about it in a different, but not incompatible way. There is a field of psychology called “locus of control theory.” I don’t want to get esoteric here, so I’ll summarize a couple of decades of research in a couple sentences. The world is divided into people who are “bowlers” and people who are “craps players.” Bowlers believe that what they do and what they get are related. Craps players believe that everything that happens to them is luck or magic, and their actions aren’t related to consequences.
At its extreme, “born again” fundamentalism is a religious view for craps players. No matter what you do, magic will make it better on Sunday morning. Some people’s lives are train wrecks through no fault of their own, but some people create their own wrecks, again and again. Show up on Sunday, sing loudly, and then go home and do whatever got you into that wreck again.
Please, this is not a critique of sincere believers of any faith. Like the quote above, it’s an analysis of why some people find some forms of faith so appealing.
We have a home 25 miles from town, seven miles from concrete, on a two-track. The week before hunting season begins we hear automatic weapon fire all night long.I hear ya!
Umm, how exactly were their precious rights at stake here? And when did the right to blow away varmints with military grade hardware first arise?
There’s always hunting pheasants with Kalishnakov rifles. Don’t imagine much would be left besides some blood and a few feathers.
…my daddy taught me that it was great to have a few teeth missing, because if he missed the buckshot in the pheasant I could just spit it out. Of course, that lead shot is probably why I’m wasting my Sunday in Froggy land.
for anyone to possess military weaponry. Period.
Zumbo knew what he was talking about.
One of the sad ironies here is that Mr. Zumbo’s remarks bear some similarity to what the hunters in one of our samples stated about assault type firearms.
Well, this may not be a popular view on this website, but I’d like you all to consider what the second amendment says, and the reason for it in the first place. Then consider the direction our country is heading under King George.
I would actually agree with the man that those wepons are inappropriate for hunting. But I don’t understand why “hunting” comes up every time there is a discussion about the “right to bear arms”.
The founding fathers wanted a population that was armed with military grade equipment, for the purpose of protecting the country from the government.
It has nothing to do with the right to have guns for hunting, it is all about the right to have terrorist weapons like those terrorists did back in the 1770s. It is the right to have guns to kill people.
No. I am not a member of the NRA. Nor am I even a gun owner. I don’t even completely agree with the founding fathers on this issue. But I can read what they wrote, and wonder why hunting comes into the conversation whenever.
I’m not going to argue one way or another over whether or not they are talking only about a “well regulate militia” or “the people” or both. I’m just tired of hearing “hunting” connected to the second amendment.
Even better is that the gun rights crowd chooses to ignore language in the amendment they claim gives the right to own whatever guns they want. The amendment says “well regulated militia”. That sure sounds like an opening for gun control if ever they’re were one. How do you have a well regulated militia if you can’t track how many guns exist and who owns them? Even better, it demands that anybody owning a gun should be considered part of the militia and tracked. I’m sure the gun control freaks really want to abide by the letter of the Constitution.
For all you gun nuts, arm yourselves heavily. Eventually, there will be an accident, and someone important to you will be taken out by your weaponry.
It’s called evolution.
The gun nuts who want to be able to violently overthrow the government are a relatively small group. The success of the true gun nuts in the NRA depends on keeping hunters and those who have weapons for criminal defense on their side. It’s tricky, because both of those groups have big issues with things like automatic machine guns that give the nuts such a hard-on. Hunters look down on people who hunt small game with heavy weaponry, for the same reason we do. Self-defenders realize that they’re unlikely to be able to defend themselves against people with automatic weaponry while automatic weapons are little benefit for most legitimate self-defense situations.
Zumbo set off a firestorm because he simultaneous reminded both groups why they shouldn’t be in bed with the real gun nuts. The vast majority of gun owner will realize their own goals of hunting or self-defense are fully maintained with only ordinary rifles and handguns if they sit down and think about it. It’s imperative that the gun nuts shut down a respected voice like Zumbo before too many people read him.
I’m confident that Outdoor Life could keep on Zumbo without much financial trouble. The vast majority of their readers agree with him. They’ve just been frightened by a relatively small group that is highly organized and swamped them with letters. Zumbo’s own best approach at this point would be to start up a mag for real hunting enthusiasts which explicitly rejects the use of heavy weaponry. There’s a market for that, while the nuts will never let him write so much as a LTE in the current venues.
good points, but it isn’t just subscriptions, it’s advertising. The nuts have a lot of financial power.
i found this tidbit from the wapo article a bit disappointing:
“despite a profuse public apology and a vow to go hunting soon with an assault weapon, zumbo’s career appears to be over.”
it’s his galileo-like recantation of his belief in the weapons’ inappropriate use, combined with the utter futility of his gestures of contrition, that makes this episode so pathetic.
not only did mr. zumbo forget that the right has turned the word “terrorist” itself into dynamite, he also forgot whose hands were feeding him.
and he forgot who his “friends” really were.
Pretator culture. No surprise to me. Normal behavior.
Sorry:
Should have been predator culture.
At least three times in the past several months there have been discussions on DailyKos about some ridiculous and indefensible policy of the NRA. In each case, almost immediately, characters showed up to hijack the threads, discussing the minutia of how automatic weapons worked or totally moving the threat do some civil liberties issue. Most recently it was about a comic book that was blatantly racist. It was evident that NRA Trolls were hanging out there specifically to grab and divert any discussion.
The fact is that an organization that once represented hunters and sportsmen has been hijacked by arms dealers on people so far right of the libertarians they’ve left the realm of sanity. They are using the same techniques of fear and bigotry that kept Hitler in power 60 years ago. (Yes, I’ve said it. It isn’t politically correct to know anything about German history these days, but it’s there.)
The NRA simply does not want any discussion within its ranks of logic, patriotism or the (real) Constitution.
The NRA and its members are deeply paranoid. Any restriction on guns is considered to be the “camel’s nose” and soon Communist central controllers will remove guns from everyone.
I am now advocating a different approach. Let them have their guns, everywhere. Let a thousand guns bloom.
Because, when a thousand guns are everywhere, there will be atrocity after atrocity, and soon people will understand the consequences of a stupid gun policy.
So, get them guns out there, and shoot everything in sight.
Another point…after great frustration with those DK discussions, I spent a good deal of effort looking into how the very far right uses the NRA membership. One interesting point was a job posting, involving the sale of NRA mailing lists. That’s what happens when a reasonable person joins the IRA. Interlinked groups get their name and their profile.
And to Mr. Anderson, that’s actually an anachronistic misrepresentation of the second amendment. In the 18th Century, it was reasonable to imagine armed rebellion. The King was quartering troops in the homes of wealthy merchants. I am not an opponent of guns–own many, and have at one time used a “carry permit.” But to imagine that in this day and age people should have automatic weapons in their homes to protect them from the government is ludicrous. We do need protection from our government, but not with Uzis in the 21st Century. There is no reason not to keep long guns in the home to protect one’s family and property. But neither is there any reason to prevent background checks at gun shows or convince people they need automatic weapons–unless it’s for greater profit for dealers.
In St Louis, in 2007:
A mentally retarded woman shot her 70 year old husband for bringing her a warm beer.
A 9 year old killed his 3 year old sister.
A 1st grade child brought one of 80 guns kept at home to school.
A developmentally disabled 7th grader brought a gun to school and fired.
So, let’s get more guns out there, and let’s let them in everywhere.
Let’s get guns back into the Legislature.
Let’s get guns on airplanes.
Let’s get guns everywhere.
I’m pro-atrocity.
And in Florida you can shoot anyone on the street if you “feel threatened.” A BIG NRA billboard just south of the Georgia state line says “Warning…We carry guns here…” Talk about paranoid.
I’m not willing to let these atrocities build up to try to convince people, because these are the same folks who deny evidence for evolution (It’s a trick God put in the rocks to tempt me.) No amount of evidence will convince the paranoid that they are insane.