The National Rifle Association has argued for years that the only legitimate form of gun control is hitting your target. Saturday, Feb. 11, 2006 Vice President Dick Cheney, working to bolster the GOP's conservative base for the 2006 elections, ostensibly aiming at a covey of quail, discharged his .28 guage shotgun into a Texas millionaire lawyer, Harry Whittington, hitting him in the cheek, neck and chest. The birds got away, and Democratic chances to take control of the Senate were seriously weakened, according to the conventional wisdom. But an anonymous NRA spokesman worried that Cheney's extreme stance in opposition to gun control might be misused by liberals for partisan political purposes. "We have always taken an unorthodox view toward political speech," he joked. "We believe in massive firepower when it comes to the Congress, but this is a new one for us."
Katharine Armstrong, who owned the ranch where the shooting took place described it as a "peppering." "This is something that happens from time to time. You know, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong, which explains why many Republicans are so indignant with civil libertarian apoplexy when the police pepper spray demonstrators without provocation. Whittington was in stable condition in a Corpus Christi hospital on Sunday.
Whittington was immediately assisted by the medical personnel who always accompany the Vice President and was taken to the hospital in the Vice President's ambulance. Democrats attacked this as an abuse of tax payer funds. "Once again we see this Administration bend over backwards to save the life of a millionaire!" fumed an anonymous spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee. "And aren't quail some kind of endangered species?" she muttered.
