Cheney goes on a rampage!!
POSTED BY: Khyron
UPDATED: Friday, May 14, 2021 03:27
VIEWED: 21041
PAGE 8 of 18
If Cheney shot someone (while poaching) due to drunkenness, does it change the conclusion from 'accidental' to 'negligent'? And if, as SignyM suggests, it was at close range, doesn't it add weight to any potential charge?
The coverup was more likely to be about the alcohol than the shooting itself.
Nice job Cheney. You stood up like a true man.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Help me out with the ballistics here. How much spread and penetration do you get at 30 yards with birdshot? Enough that potentially a full load hits a person-sized target? Enough to penetrate a vest, shirt, and about 3" of flesh to near the heart? That's the one thing I can't quite seem to get a bead on (so to speak)- the actual distance.
Cheney was shooting a 28 gauge shotgun using #7 1/2 shot (per the accident report). This shot is .10" in diameter and there are about 350 in an ounce. Most 28 gauge loads are .75 oz, or about 275 pellets. Normal pattern for a quail gun would put 57 to 67% of the shot inside a 30 inch circle at 40 yards. Muzzle velocity of this type load is around 1,200 to 1,300 feet per second, and slows to probably 900 to 1,000fps at 30 yds. 30-35 yds is about max range to reliably penetrate a quail's feathers and skin a couple of inches with enough pellets to kill it.
So, even if the Veep were aiming directly at Mr. Whittington at around 30 yds he'd have probably hit him with 100-150 pellets at most, less if he was on the edge of the pattern. They'd have been going fast enough to penetrate clothes and skin, but not bones such as ribs or skull. A pellet hitting below the sternum might be a pretty good candidate for the one that caused later heart trouble (Just speculation on my part. I'm not sure how everyone was positioned.)
Looks like a hunting accident to me.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Everybody here is missing the point.
Hunting is SUPPOSED to be dangerious. That's what gives it it's edge. Adreneline doesn't come from a shoot-the-target video game. Shooting a living being with a weapon IS THE POINT.
Cheney just got a target a little higher up the food chain than he expected.
And if he were not the VP, it would have made for one Helluva cool hunting story 'round the campfire, with or without the beer.
Seein' into the truth of things Chrisisall
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And then the question is- accident with or without alcohol? There were two other people there. But nobody is going to pipe up and say Oh yeah, we had a nice warmup when the day started and kept ourselves pretty toasty all along. The veep was feeling no pain by five. Of course, the veep was not interviewed immediately afterwards (um- why not?) so unless there is some fancy 72-hours-later test for alcohol that I don't know of (alcohol dehydrogenase only tells you if someone drinks regularly, not recently) or some other evidence shows up (the medical report shows that the shot was extremely closely spaced- too close for 30 yards) then we may never know if criminal negligence was involved.
We DO know that Cheney screwed up, and that he squatted on the incident for days.
---------------------------------
Please don't think they give a shit.
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Quote:
HOW DO YOU SHOOT SOMEONE IN THE FACE AND ITS AND ACCIDENT
How do you shoot someone in the face accidentally? Easy. You don't mean to shoot them, but you do. Hence, an "accident", as opposed to an "on purpose". ;)
Seriously, there are loads of people accidentally shot in this country every year. Some of them in the face, even. Lots of them even by "unloaded" weapons. I can't tell you the number of people I've heard about who were killed by "unloaded" weapons, or even when they were cleaning their own weapons, which were "unloaded at the time" - or so they thought.
The simple thing I take away from these lessons is this: There is no such thing as an unloaded gun, until and unless you've unloaded it yourself and VERIFIED that it's unloaded. Anyone ever tries to hand me a gun with the barrel pointed at me, and I'm going to assume they're assaulting me, and respond in kind by disarming them, roughly. ;) The way I see it, no one ever hands you an unloaded weapon. Respect it, fear it, and check it until YOU know it's unloaded. Sure, it might not have any ammo in it, but until I've checked, rechecked, and verified that for myself (generally by cycling the action a few times and looking through the barrel), all guns are assumed to be loaded and safety-off. Maybe that's one of the reasons I've been around guns and shooting since I was a tot and never shot anyone or been shot myself...
There are two kinds of "accident-prone" people that are particularly dangerous to have around guns, in my experience: Those who don't know a thing about guns or gun safety, and those who think they know too much. People who've never been around guns tend to get a little crazy with them on first encounter, and start pointing them at others and waving them around the room, without knowing a damn thing about what they're doing or what they're holding. People who are TOO comfortable with guns tend to take for granted that a gun is empty because they pulled the magazine out, and because they're "smart". I try never to be "smart" around guns. I've been around them most of my life (my dad's a gun nut, and ex-military, so we grew up around a houseful of guns), but I've never allowed myself to get so comfortable with them that I forget what they can do.
Something else to point out about the Cheney Incident: When you're REALLY concentrating on something, it's easy to get cuaght up in the moment, or to have "tunnel vision" so to speak. I think this is probably what happened to Cheney. He was tracking a bird, beading in on it, and just didn't see what was around him - or in front of him! I can relate, from a kind-of-similar experience I had. As I've mentioned before, I race cars for a hobby. There's a phenomena we call "The Red Mist" that occurs sometimes; you're so enthralled and involved in what you're doing, that sometimes you block out things around you - even things that might pose a danger to you or others. One event, I was on course, having a good run, concentrating intently on an upcoming series of turns, working out just exactly where I wanted to position myself for the best "line" through the corners, and I didn't even notice the two corner-workers who were feverishly trying to flag me down and stop me. They were waving bright orange flags at me, but they were "off-line", and therefore not in my visual frame of reference, nor my mental one. I noticed them almost as I passed them, and it broke my revery for long enough to realize that something was up. Turns out another car had spun and died on-course just after the series or corners I was heading for, and they were trying to stop me in case I came upon this other car and hit it. And I damn near didn't see them. The Red Mist had closed over me, and all I could see in my mind's eye was the run and the win.
So, yeah... I can see how Cheney shot someone in the face and it was still an accident.
Mike
A baby seal walks into a club...
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Quote:See, I always thought hunting would make a lot more sense as a sport if people with live ammo went and hunted each other. And people hunted game with paint balls. It puts hunter and hunted more on an equal footing.
Everybody here is missing the point.
Hunting is SUPPOSED to be dangerious. That's what gives it it's edge. Adreneline doesn't come from a shoot-the-target video game. Shooting a living being with a weapon IS THE POINT.
Cheney just got a target a little higher up the food chain than he expected.
And if he were not the VP, it would have made for one Helluva cool hunting story 'round the campfire, with or without the beer.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Help me out with the ballistics here. How much spread and penetration do you get at 30 yards with birdshot? Enough that potentially a full load hits a person-sized target? Enough to penetrate a vest, shirt, and about 3" of flesh to near the heart? That's the one thing I can't quite seem to get a bead on (so to speak)- the actual distance.
Cheney was shooting a 28 gauge shotgun using #7 1/2 shot (per the accident report). This shot is .10" in diameter and there are about 350 in an ounce. Most 28 gauge loads are .75 oz, or about 275 pellets. Normal pattern for a quail gun would put 57 to 67% of the shot inside a 30 inch circle at 40 yards. Muzzle velocity of this type load is around 1,200 to 1,300 feet per second, and slows to probably 900 to 1,000fps at 30 yds. 30-35 yds is about max range to reliably penetrate a quail's feathers and skin a couple of inches with enough pellets to kill it.
So, even if the Veep were aiming directly at Mr. Whittington at around 30 yds he'd have probably hit him with 100-150 pellets at most, less if he was on the edge of the pattern. They'd have been going fast enough to penetrate clothes and skin, but not bones such as ribs or skull. A pellet hitting below the sternum might be a pretty good candidate for the one that caused later heart trouble (Just speculation on my part. I'm not sure how everyone was positioned.)
Looks like a hunting accident to me.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
Geezer: Thanks for that in-depth answer. Never mind what I said about shotguns and ballistics; this looks to be a much more knowledgeable response than any I could give.
Now, IF alcohol were involved, that changes the landscape a bit. But we may never really know, now.
What's likely to keep this story alive, and hang it around the Veep's neck like an albatross (and not the good luck kind), is what was done in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Disappearing for a day or two, or even for 12 hours, doesn't necessarily mean that there's definitely a cover-up afoot, but it DOES give Cheney's opponents lots of fodder with which to conduct character assassination. Just ask Ted Kennedy!
Oh, and lest we forget, the shootee in this case IS a 78-year-old man. My dad's 65 with a good heart, but if I shot him in the face with a shotgun, he just might have a heart attack too. I'm just sayin'...
I'm no fan of Cheney, but let's not paint him as a gun-wielding, war-mongering, drunken-pedophile-murderous-psycho just yet. After all, I haven't seen any real evidence that he's a pedophile. ;)
Mike
A baby seal walks into a club...
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I can see how a fast-paced race gets the adrenaline going, which then narrows your focus.
But a quiet slow amble in search of quail? If that's too much excitement for him, he's in worse shape than anyone knew.
I just get so excited holding a gun.
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Well, apparently there was some alcohol there. Armstrong herself said "There may be a beer or two in there, but remember not everyone in the party was shooting." Since she wasn't shooting (she was in ther car and didn't see what happened, AND she wasn't drinking, the logical conclusion is that other members of the pary were both shooting AND drinking.
www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/cheneys-chappaquiddick-i_b_15711.html
Kwicko- And if you had not seen the flags and driven on thru the Red Mist, and if you had accidentally injured someone, you would have been overcome by remorse and you would have been made to file an accident report with the police right away- and probably been made to take a breathalyzer on the spot. You wouldn't waved off the sheriff and eaten dinner. And lest we forget- alcohol caused Kennedy's Chappaquidick. There may be more parallels here than you realize.
Quote:Okay, warn me before you pop up with humor, will ya???? I choked on my coffee and nearly had a heart attack for cryin' out loud!
I'm no fan of Cheney, but let's not paint him as a gun-wielding, war-mongering, drunken-pedophile-murderous-psycho just yet. After all, I haven't seen any real evidence that he's a pedophile.
Geezer- thank you for the info on shotguns. When dealing with situations, it's always best to have the facts.
And now, back to work....
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SignyM- not able to stand excitement either.
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So I'm curious. The legal pundits were eager to parse Texas law re hunting accidents. HERO - what does the law say if alcohol is involved? Perhaps you could look it up and give us the benefit of your expertise.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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