I’ve always thought there are some events that shouldn’t get National TV coverage.
Jim Scoutten
March 7, 2009
Producer and host of Shooting USA
Boomershoot coverage?
H/T to Ry (via email as well as his blog), followed by Kevin (email and blog), Say Uncle, Robb (email and blog), Phil, and Sebastian.
[I am a little insulted. Boomershoot got positive coverage from Newsweek, KING 5 Evening Magazine (Seattle television show), Outside Magazine, and numerous other media outlets (that list is just a partial listing). If he doesn’t think we are appropriate for national TV coverage he is mistaken. We can and have handled national media before and done quite well.
It just so happens another national TV show is planning to attend this year anyway. I also got a request for permission from a participant doing a video with smaller audience. Boomershoot should be well represented in the media this year. The gun blogger list of participants alone is impressive.
Like I said, I’m a little insulted but Scoutten is missing out more than Boomershoot by his decision.
Thanks for all the support guys but I don’t really think it’s necessary to do a Zumbo on him. He’s not saying Boomershoot should be banned or anything. He just doesn’t think it is something he wants to present to the public.
In his followup comment he says he doesn’t want put anything “on TV that could alarm the anti-gunners”. I disagree. I am of the opinion that alarming them over Boomershoot then making fools of them is the more appropriate tactic (ask me sometime in private how we have baited them but they failed to take the bait). But if he doesn’t want to do that I don’t see a reason to attack him over that judgment call.–Joe]
I picked up on that ‘alarm the anti-gunners’ comment at well and posted my reply to the ar15.com thread. One of his other comments was to the effect that explaining civilian sniper training would be hard to explain. I don’t think he needs to be Zumbo’d, but he does need to realize that his attitudes are exactly the kind of thing that the anti-gunners like to see.
We don’t get Cable so I have no idea how “nationally influential” he is – or any of the televised shooting-sports for that matter – but is he from New York or something? His Stockholm Syndrome is showing. He’s MSM now, an arbiter of Taste and shaper of Teh Narrative.
I think Robb Allen put it best: “I have a problem with his blanket assertion that things like Boomershoot have no place on ANY national TV show.”
That’s what offended me.
I see it as he is afraid of the anti-gun people and wants to avoid them. I’m of the opinion we need to make them afraid of us. Every time they poke their heads up we need to expose them as the bigots they are. We need to engage them and defeat them.
That said, it’s his show and if doesn’t feel up to the task, as I see it, then I agree he shouldn’t be doing it. You don’t send someone into battle who thinks they will lose unless you have a very good reason for sacrificing them.
He is making a positive contribution and he should be given accolades for that. If he doesn’t want to engage in the same battles I want to then I don’t have a problem with that as long as he doesn’t try and hold back those that do want to engage in those battles.
Maybe he didn’t see Jessie James cutting a Monster Garage project car to shreds and lighting it on fire with a Dillon Minigun loaded 4 or 5:1 with tracers. That was a very popular episode.
Then Mythbusters used a minigun to shoot fish in a barrel on one of their episodes. They often say they love testing myths that involve guns and explosives.
The gun related programming on History Channel is some of their most successful and oft requested material. Their sales people have told me so directly.
People are hungry for this sort of thing, partly due the large vacuum in the Old Media.
Wreckreation Nation has done several pieces on shooting pastimes as well. I recently saw an episode that featured a couple of other groups that shoot explosive targets. Nothing on the scale of boomershoot though. You might want to contact them and see if they’d like to feature boomershoot sometime.
I don’t see this as a big insult, actually. The shooting community is large enough that there is something or everyone. Does Scouten cover the Knob Creek machine gun shoot? To a lot of shooters, events like Boomershoot and Knob Creek are way out on the fringe. That doesn’t mean that these folks, or the gun industry folks that cater to them, have turned their backs on the Second Amendment. It might just mean that have a preference – and last I checked it’s still a (somewhat) free country.
DeFens; I don’t believe the second amendment was mentioned here. Nor do I personally believe it’s a big insult. It’s just a bit dumb and out of touch. It reminds me of Republicans who say they support a free market but that they also support this or that (pick your favorite) socialist program. I might also call it a form of cowardice. It’s like an NRA spokesman calling for enforcement of existing gun laws because he thinks it will get some people off the fence and on his side. All it does for sure is promote the false idea that gun laws are a form of crime control. What this guy is doing is promoting the idea that gun owners like Joe are an embarrasment.
Sometimes moderates can seem to be temporarily useful, but by definition they’re never willing to go for victory. Ever. They always stop short, thus perpetuating the problem indefinitely (we see this in Israel, no? California elected a moderate governor– look where it got them, etc). Someone who is afraid of showing full support on principle, or embarrased by their own in some way, is not your best ally. At some point, someone has to step in a take up the slack where the moderates gave up and quit. Someone has to be willing to step into enemy territory and secure the position– someone with a foundation in principles and a vision of what victory actually looks like.