On Evening Magazine’s home page (registration required) they say it is their top story:
Blasting out of the daily grind
Have you ever had one of those days at work when you just want to blow something up to blow off some steam? Shoot your computer with a high-caliber rifle? You’re not alone.
That teaser links to the story below. So far, so good. I expect video will show up soon.
Blasting out of the daily grind
03:36 PM PDT on Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Have you ever had one of those days at work when you just want to blow something up to blow off some steam? Shoot your computer with a high-caliber rifle? You’re not alone. What would you like to blow up?
Where the Clearwater River wanders through the hillsides, you’ll find Joe Huffman planting his father’s fields with a thousand pounds of explosives.
One weekend a year, the quiet of rural Idaho is blown to smithereens by gun-toting, target-shooting, explosion-loving folks.
They’re teachers, physical therapists, and stock traders. They come from as far as Alaska and Florida for the chance to fire at targets that explode when you hit them.
Boomershoot, as it’s named, blasts them out of the daily grind.
Kevin Wagner, a software engineer from Seattle and a first-timer at Boomershoot, found out that hitting targets nearly 400 yards away isn’t easy.
Stephanie Sailor ran two longshot cyber-campaigns for Congress with her laptop. They’ve been through a lot together and she could think of no better way to put it out of its misery than with explosives on the screen and good aim.
But anything is fair game and after a good day of blowing things up, these folks find it easier to return to their various jobs.
Boomershoot organizers are happy to report that no one has ever gotten shot, blown up or anything like that. They say they are very serious about safety.
Excellent segment! I had pretty much expected Evening Magazine to take a light-hearted, fun perspective on the Boomershoot, and I’m glad that’s what happened. Even John Curley’s post-segment remarks were positive, along the lines of, “This looks like fun!”
I’m glad to see some positive gun-related stories making the media.
It was a very positive segment, though a bit short on explicitly positive gun stuff; about what I was hoping for / expecting, given their normal stories. It’s always amazing how 20 minutes of interview and footage can turn into 18 seconds of airtime and 2 sound-bites. Oh, well, at least they got the “not to be done at home, not to be done by amatures, not to be done to light your BBQ” line at the end 🙂
Rolf, are you suggesting that the viewing audience should have been subjected to MORE of you?
Eeek!!!
Uh, no…. I’d not want my image to be inflicted on more people for more time :-). It was actually about what I was expecting, and others I know they got a lot of footage of also only got 15 or twenty seconds of air-time (as expected). About the only thing I expected more of was footage of Kim Griffis or Joe Huffman. Like I said, pretty good, pretty fair, no significant mis-representations or out-of-context quotes, so it could have been a lot worse.