Things A Mistake Will Tell You.

Several people have wondered why I made no comment about the famed accidental shooting incident, the one wherein our second in command of the U.S. Military shot a hunting companion.

Why? Well, I suppose you could say I wasn’t much interested. Then, too, you could say it was hardly the sort of thing I’d be surprised to hear – not from this bunch. The real wonder is that the press corps of a nation with a pratfalling, spastic, FUBAR administration like this made such a fuss. Methinks, I thought, thou doth protest too much.

Come on – you were surprised? To hear that one of these clowns screwed up something as immensely complicated and difficult as refraining from shooting yourself or a comrade clown? Tell me – what have they ever done that would make any rational and reasonable person think that?

You see no parallel between this and say, the 9-ll debacle or Iraq? I don’t believe you. Neither do I believe that the news media see no parallel. What I do believe is that all the uproar is more smoke and mirrors, the feint a magician uses to lure your eyes to one hand while he prestidigitates with the other.

Accident? Sure, probably. I don’t have to think it was anything else. The fact that a grown man did something that stupid is quite enough, especially when that grown man a heart beat from the trigger of a nuclear shotgun.

Let us go back fro a moment and review. As a boy, beginning at ten, I went hunting often and as a matter of routine. In hunting season, I hunted daily. I hunted most often with friends, as many as four or five. I shot literally thousands of game, mostly pheasants, squirrels, and rabbits. All, generally, are moving targets; more, it was considered dishonorable then to shoot “a sitting duck.” Men didn’t shoot at a bird or animal while it remained an easy target. Fish in a barrel was not sport.

But this is another time, isn’t it? In the movies, the hero never drew first, never threw the first punch. To kick or strike an opponent while he was “down” – on the ground was the act of a craven coward, an individual without honor or personal worth. To attack someone smaller, weaker, or obviously unable to mount a respectable counter-attack was despicable. To strike a woman meant absolute ostracism. Men would turn their backs upon your approach. Don’t laugh – I’ve seen it done.

But this IS another time, isn’t it? The movies are different. So are we. Time was, only the enemy did unspeakable things like torture. No decent human being did things like Nazi Germany and its SturmStaffel SS. Imperial Japanese Army soldiers who raped and pillaged in, for instance, NanKin, China were considered to be animals, vermin. We were better than that.

Sure. And we were – then. I saw it.

But I digress somewhat. This is about shooting. Raised from four years of age in the German Hunting tradition by relatives – one who flew with von Richtofen, the famed Red Baron – I learned the discipline of the gun. In the manner I would one day train to judo fight, I learned my kata, the kata of the gun. A thing of rote, the gun kata assured the absence of error. Repeated until it became habit, behavioral, it meant physical inability to do something stupid.

In the absence of memory concerning a safety check or the like, one knew with certainty because he knew he always did the correct thing. No exceptions. Oh, I can hear your comment. Like I said, this is another time. Often these days, I hear the nitwit dictum that a gun should always be considered to be loaded. No one but a rank amateur, or a damned fool who holds firearms in order to have something manly to play with, ever thinks that way. A properly trained gunslinger knows the condition of his weapon at all times. He not only knows whether there is ammunition in the “piece,” he knows how many, what kind, and how long they have been there and in his possession. No exceptions!

Neither is this the case only where guns are concerned. The gun kata teaches things everywhere applicable. It is de rigueur in aviation, for instance to do what is called a ‘pre-flight.” That means that the pilot goes over his airplane in meticulous detail before getting into the cockpit. Often, having gotten behind the controls, being distracted or having been forced by conditions to wait for a time, I have been unable to remember having done my ‘pre-flight.’ Never have I gotten out of the place to do another, because it wasn’t necessary. I never fail to do my pre-flight, so I know that my being in the aircraft’s seat means that I have done it.
No exceptions. Kata. The way of the judoka, the judoman. The way of the Samurai. No exceptions!

But this is another time! There was – actually was – a time when men did not lie. For a man to lie meant that he was without honor. In my novel, ‘Jonatha’s Truth,’ the antagonist Baron Han von Paulus confronts the President of the U.S. during a meeting on Air Force One. William Jefferson Clayton is the President, and the following is an excerpt:

"His own eyes held by those of the commanding figure confronting him, Clayton could not speak. 'Of late,' von Paulus continued mercilessly, 'we’ve become a society that doesn’t bother to teach or inculcate that in its children, so I don’t suppose that your ignorance of honor is your fault, really. More, I realize that some mistakes are much easier to make than others. Becoming President of the United States doesn’t make a man better, but it damned well exposes his weaknesses.'

"Von Paulus’ black eyes blazed. 'Make up your mind, Mister President,' he grated, 'and do it right now! I’m a citizen of the United States, too, I remind you, and I demand of you honor. Nothing less. And, sir, in my eyes - and in the eyes of all men like me – there’s nothing more. President, king, general, billionaire or millionaire, if you’re without honor, you are nothing. Less than a loyal horse or dog. I will never be the ally of a man without honor. Nation, either.'”

The men who raised me did not lie. Yes, yes – I know. This is another time. This is another time, far different from the time when children went hunting routinely, and with permission by parents who had no fear whatever of accident like that which seems to have befallen the second-highest ranking member of our government. You find nothing unsettling in that? Wow!

I’ve been saying for some time here that things are very bad with you. Now that you’ve made me consider the latest of the Bush-Cheney pratfalls, I may have to re-assess. It’s worse than I thought.

Some things are conspicuous by their absence to an old detective like moi, and one here is the total absence of so much as mention of the hardest, most fast rule of hunting with lethal weapons. Apparently, light of the conspicuous absence I refer to, you do not know the rule (neither did the Vice President of the United States, and second in command of our armed forces). So, I will tell you. Under no circumstances – no exceptions, god damn it - does a properly trained hunter-shooter ever fire when unaware – and that is with certainty – of what is beyond his prospective target. NO EXCEPTIONS!

To do otherwise is the act of a man contemptuous of other things and other people. It is the act of a man who puts his own gratification above concern for the welfare of others, the act of a selfish boor. It is the act of a man who is without honor.

Of course, there are things akin to that, things like actions that produce “collateral damage.” What happened to Harry Whittington was that kind of act, and that gentleman was “collateral damage.” The literally hundreds of thousands killed and maimed by the White House’s earlier “accidental shot” – Afghanistan and Iraq – are Harry Whittingtons. Indeed, this is, indeed, another time.

Many years ago, handgun hunting for squirrels with my son, I came upon a squirrel running down a tree trunk. Startled and surprised, the animal froze, head down only a few feet distant. Still very much in practice of the maneuver known then as “The Mongoose Trick, I drew the single action Ruger pistol from the Old West Gunfighter rig I wore the piece with for hunting, and killed the squirrel with a single shot in the head.

To my son’s enthusiasm, I replied that this was a lucky shot. Nobody is that fast, or that accurate. But, I added, when you practice as much as your dad practices, you tend to have that kind of luck. KATA!

Unfortunately, it works both ways. Everything we do is kata. Repeat an act often enough, and there is no way to do otherwise. Live selfishly, live without concern or consideration for the value, the safety, the well-being and good of others, it becomes behavior you can’t change.

When you practice that much, Mr. Cheney, you have that kind of luck.