From what I know of hunting, most people sit in “deer stands” and other strategic positions and wait for their prey to mosey across their path. That’s not hunting.

That’s sniping.

There is no sport to waiting for your target to pass before blowing their brains out.

Hunting should be sporty. There should be a certain chance the prey could live. Hunters should have to track down their prey like the old Indian trackers of yesteryear. I’d like to see hunters have to pass a certain block of tests before donning their camo and rocking their rifles.

They should have to do at least some of the following:

- They should be able to identify animals by their feces.

- They should be able to hear the ground and tell when an animal – any animal – is within 100 yards.

- They should be able to differentiate between the tracks of the male and female species of the animals in which they want to hunt.

- They should be able to walk for 5 miles. If golfers can walk, so can hunters. As a matter of fact, the only activity with less activity than some hunting is fishing, which is basically aquatic sniping.

- They should be able to identify which type of weapon is most effective to kill an certain type of animal.

Or if they do want to stay in one place and snipe their prey, they shouldn’t be able to shoot anything until they are in their position for at least five days. They should have to lay in the mud and wallow in their own waste.

They should have to have to prove they really want that turkey.

Also in the same conversation with the same friend, he told me there are people who purposefully hunt bear with a pistol. And then they complain they had to shoot the bear repeatedly before it dies or they brag about how they outran a pissed off bear with a bullet hole.

Seriously.

Kinda like John Candy’s “Bald Ass Bear” in “The Great Outdoors“.

There is no point for that.

Either pick the weapon you need or leave the damn bear alone.

Personally, if I was hunting bear, I would use something automatic or a rocket launcher. And if I missed, I’d call in an air strike.

Perhaps even a napalm strike like in “We Were Soldiers”. I’d burn Smokey and the rest of the bears before I let one bear chase me.

Maybe that’s why I don’t hunt. Not only am I unwilling to smell turkey poop, but I don’t have any napalm.

You know, maybe that’s why I usually don’t have good mornings.

By The Time I Get To Tucson:

At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds. – President Obama, January 2011

This Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I can almost guarantee hip-hop fans, civil rights advocates, and people who believe in fighting the power will be viewing, linking, liking, or sharing Public Enemy’s hip-hop masterpiece “By The Time I Get To Arizona“. In the wake of the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, I say watching PE this year is the wrong answer.

The American media has spent the last week preaching the need to increase civil discourse. Analysts of all ideologies have proclaimed that we must stop the yelling and try to talk out our issues. Arguing and belligerence is not the answer, and neither is violence.

The first reaction after Rep. Gifford’s attempted assassination was to blame Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and the rest of the right-wing media for the actions of Jared Loughner. Right-wing phrases such as “re-load” and “2nd Amendment solutions” made Palin and her ilk the target of intense national discussion. Whether or not Loughner was influenced by these phrases was irrelevant, but the fact that there could have been linkages was the point of debate. Yet those same violent innuendos permeate the video for “By the Time I Get To Arizona”. Within the first minute, we see Public Enemy frontman Chuck D leading a posse of people carrying M-16s, practicing karate, and shooting in a gun range. Even Chuck D’s lyrics advocate violence as a political solution.

Until we get some land
Call me the trigger man
Looki lookin’ for the governor
Huh he ain’t lovin’ ya

.

.

The cracker over there
He try to keep it yesteryear
The good ol’ days
The same ol’ ways
That kept us dyin’
Yes, you me myself and I’ndeed
What he need is a nosebleed

Of course, supporters say “By The Time I Get To Arizona” is political art, not unlike Ice-T’s “Cop Killer”. It tells the story of a person fed up with being disrespected because of his or her skin color and their desire to see the sacrifices of their heroes acknowledged in by the Government of Arizona. I completely understand that, and the freedom to create art – no matter how it could be interpreted – should never be infringed.

However, celebrating Chuck D’s message, especially in light of what happened in Tucson last week, is not the way to go. If “rap is the black CNN“, as Chuck D once said, then “By The Time I Get to Arizona” is The Glenn Beck Show. For the impressionable, Chuck D’s lyrics and images are no different than the words of any political shill who drums up ratings by spouting off controversy. Repeated daily in a medium that promotes itself as a provider of news and educated opinion, these words are not art, they are calls to action. And unfortunately action words – those of anger and emotion – sell more commercials than voices preaching calm and discourse.

(Of course, rap voices are persecuted more frequently in the media than other form of communication, as Davey D of AllHipHop.com writes in this post. Although back in the day, music was how the black community communicated it’s message of frustration – through rap, blues, or spoken word poetry.)

Just because the song’s subject matter is about Martin Luther King, Jr. does not mean it should be played every MLK Day. It’s meaning was important and relevant when it was released in 1991, and it should be remembered and respected as a voice of dissent during a very difficult time, but today, in the words of President Obama:

“let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.”

Let’s leave a farewell letter on the door in Arizona and move on to higher ground.

(Interesting note: The classic country song “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” starts with the image of a man leaving a note on the door of his lover. Martin Luther posted the “Ninety-Five Theses” on the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenburg, Germany, beginning the Protestant Reformation in 1517.)

In case you’ve never seen it, here is “By The Time I Get To Arizona”:

It is an understatement to say Cahill is not a fan of Blackwater. He is frequently a guest on cable news segments and spars opposite Blackwater spokespeople on the pros and cons of the government relationships with private security contractors.

Although I definitely see his point and I find his writing interesting, I never heard Cahill talk about what he would do with the employees if a company like Blackwater were to go out of business. Combined with recent reports of the US government reducing dependency on contractors, where are these people supposed to go?

While I would like to see the engineer folks and technical people build bridges, hospitals, schools, and environmentally safe, locally owned power plants, here are a few ideas for those former super black operations secret squirrel commando ninja warriors:

Wildlife Avenger – Whereas people and countries and even business can afford protection, animals cannot. However they are the ones hunted and killed to the point of extinction. Putting former private commandos under the employ of park rangers would stop illegal hunting almost immediately, especially in big game places like Africa. How great would it be to see a few ex-commandos riding a herd of elephants, catching poachers with military-grade surveillance and blasting them with machine guns? It would be like scene out of Lord of the Rings, only it would save some wildlife.

Bouncers at Strip Clubs – If they are good enough to guard heads of state, they should be good enough to guard beautiful ladies, right? I pity the first fool who tries to touch a girl inappropriately and gets his fingers not only broken, but folded up and inserted in his rectum.

“Rectum? Damn near killed him!”

Stop International Slave Trade – Did you know there are thousands, if not millions of people exploited and sold into slavery worldwide? Personally, I think it is one of the most inhumane and barbaric crimes we have left on Earth. I’d like to see those Blackwater guys become 21st Century versions of John Brown and Harriett Tubman, albeit with a bit of weaponry. Like with the poachers, after seeing a trail of dead slave traders, I think potential slave owners would be less likely to take up the torch and the industry will die real quick.

Celeb Bodyguards – Like guarding strippers, guarding celebrities shouldn’t be that much of a stretch, right? Although I have never faced a crowd of 22,000 pre-teen girls with their sights on Justin Bieber it can’t be too far from facing an unorganized posse of armed insurgents. On second thought …

Deter Sex Crimes – Almost hand-in-hand with stopping human trafficking is helping put the kabosh on sexual predators and pedophiles. Since the Blackwater guys are used to operating beyond the law, giving them free reign to round up some of society’s worst scumbags would probably be overwhelmingly appreciated. Can you imagine the reaction from the first guy to go to a house where he expects there to be a 15-year-old girl only to meet five camouflaged commandos surrounded by a few of their old torture devices from Abu Grahib? As an added bonus, there are also many more Blackwater guys than there are hosts of To Catch a Predator.

Vigilante Superheroes – Inspired by movies such as Kick-Ass or Mystery Men, former Blackwater employees could embrace their inner Clark Kent or the Blue Raja and be masked men of the 21st Century. They could repel down buildings to stop muggings, conduct raids on drug houses, or even stop bank robberies single-handedly.

Martial Arts Instructors – There isn’t much I could say about this without stating the obvious. These guys know how to fight. Who wouldn’t want to learn how to break someone’s neck by twisting their big toe?

Pirate Protection – No, Pirate Protection does not mean breaking every TV in Pittsburgh. It means protecting boats against possibly being raided or invaded by the scoundrels of the seven seas (and Somalia).

And finally, how about putting them under the leadership of the United Nations and allowing the UN to finally have it’s own fighting force for enforcing, creating, or making peace throughout the world? No more need to use U.S. troops or any other troops in silly blue helmets. The UN’s entire military force would be battle-hardened veterans. I doubt any rag-tag group set on genocide or ethnic turmoil would have the gumption to step up against the baddest group of international mercenaries this side of Boba Fett.

Especially if they were riding elephants.

Patience, young grasshopper. You will be rewarded.)

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Last month, I faced a big dilemma. I received my last issue in my subscription to Baseball Digest. I have been getting Baseball Digest since late 1986, since I was 9 years old and the magazine featured Sid Fernandez and Mike Scott.

Recently, however, the powers that be at Baseball Digest have changed the magazine quite a bit. It not only looks different, but they also only publish six times a year, instead of monthly as they have for 60 years. And they started including articles on fantasy baseball. I seriously thought about not renewing. It wasn’t the same magazine.

But I renewed for one more year. We’ll see after that.

Anyway, my latest issue featured their annual necrology, or list of all the baseball-related people who died in the past 365 days. I’ve written before about my odd fascination with the Baseball Digest necrology. I don’t know why, but I read all the obituaries in the article, all 30 of them.

This year, inspired by the Nick Adenhart tragedy, Baseball Digest published a sidebar article with list of players who died while active in their baseball careers. They listed players such as Joe Kennedy, Darryl Kile, Steve Olin, and of course, Roberto Clemente.

(Here is a similar list in the ESPN.com archives. There are a few names not on the Baseball Digest list.)

Surprisingly, there were a lot of names I never heard of. And a few ballplayers who died from some really strange causes.

Did you know in 1932, Red Sox pitcher Ed Morris was killed during a fight at a Florida fish fry?

Did you know Reds catcher Willard Hersberger committed suicide in 1940 after “blaming himself for two consecutive Cincinnati defeats”?

And finally, in 1935, Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder Len Koenecke was killed when he was hit in the head by a fire extinguish swung by an airplane pilot while the flight was in the air. Apparently, soon after take off, Koenecke began interfering with the duties of the pilot and co-pilot. There was an in-flight scuffle and Koenecke was subdued in the most violent of manners.

(TheDeadballEra.com has all the newspaper clippings from the incident posted on their site. I highly recommend taking a look. Actually that whole site is phenomenal. It is entirely dedicated to the deaths of baseball players.)

Whereas we still lose the ballplayers to heart attacks, car accidents, or the occasional gun shot, I doubt we will see another tragedy like Len Koenecke’s for a long time.

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Thought #2:

Is there a correlation between bad teams and lack of home runs during the steroid era (approximately 1990-2004)?

Did the teams with the worst records during the steroid era have the lowest home runs per season average?

I’m sure I could do the research, but I’m guessing the best teams during that era hit the most home runs. Teams like the Pirates, Royals, (Devil) Rays, and probably even the Mets lacked the budget or front office smarts to benefit from the steroid era. During a time when marginal semi-stars such as Bret Boone and Todd Hundley were considered legitimate power hitters, smart teams had to know something was going on. Teams like the Yankees had the wallet and the wherewithal to take advantage and sign numerous chemically enhanced sluggers.

I’m guessing  there was a clear relationship between home runs and wins during the steroid era. Since home runs equaled wins, and steroids equaled home runs, those teams who did not win regularly between 1990 and 2004 probably didn’t have too many players who were on the cheating side of science.

In the wake of the Gilbert Arenas gun debacle, the time is now for the NRA to reach out to organizations it doesn’t normally associate with. What the NRA should absolutely do is reach out to the NBA, NFL, MLB, and any other sports leagues and offer to teach instruction classes on safe and proper gun ownership, handling, and transport. This would benefit not only the athletes, but also the leagues and the NRA itself.

Benefit to athletes:

Overall, if the NRA would start teaching athletes the right way to handle guns, maybe we would start seeing less incidents such as those that occurred to Arenas, Sebastian Telfair, Stephen Jackson, Plaxico Burress, or former Cowboys head coach Barry Switzer.

(Wow. Check out what Switzer did back in 1997. According to reports, “a loaded .38-caliber revolver was found in his carry-on baggage at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.” I’m sure that’s impossible these days.)

If possible, the NRA should teach courses not only to active players now, but also as part of the indoctrination seminars leagues have for new players – where players are warned about groupies, instructed on finances, taught how to talk to the media, etc. This would lay the groundwork for a change in behavior. If the players opt not to own a gun, that’s their choice. But for those that do chose to own and carry, at least they are instructed the right way.

Benefit to the Leagues:

Currently the NBA and NFL have made statements and enacted policies that are fairly anti-gun. However, this has not stopped the flow of incidents. If the athletes aren’t listening to suggestions that they shouldn’t carry, then the leagues should implement courses to help them carry and own the right way. Allowing the NRA to instruct athletes would help the leagues. First and foremost, from a public relations perspective, it would hopefully reduce the number of embarrassing incidents. From a legal perspective, it may also give the leagues more leverage to use against a player if they do commit a crime with a gun. If a player attends a league-approved, NRA-taught course and still finds themselves on the wrong side of the law, the league could state the player was taught and hence should have known better.

(This would alleviate situations such as Arenas “not knowing” he couldn’t bring guns into the locker room or that he needed to follow the laws and guidelines of Washington, DC. Ignorance of the law, especially in this case, is almost laughable.)

Benefit to the NRA:

As I stated in the introduction, there is a definite benefit for the NRA to reach out and assist the NFL, NBA, and other sports leagues. Teaching athletes would expose the NRA to a brand new audience, to include many people who never heard of the organization. The NRA would also benefit from the positive press it would get for attempting to reduce high profile gun crime. If they promote themselves right, after they get an arrangement with one league, the positive press would lead to other leagues signing up, which would only continue to show the NRA in a positive light.

The NRA takes pride in its instructors. They are ambassadors of the organization. Nothing would benefit the NRA more than to showcase these instructors teaching the most high profile athletes in the world.

Epilogue: I emailed the NRA blog webmasters and asked them if they had or are planning to reach out to professional sports leagues. So far I have not received a response.

A few years ago, I regularly received one of the National Rifle Association’s official publications, a magazine called First Freedom. Now before you start snickering, I think the NRA is a good organization that stands for something positive. They sometimes get a bad rap by the media, but that’s not the point of my story. The point is the NRA’s magazine.

Throughout the months and maybe even years that I received First Freedom, I slowly started noticing something. There was an overwhelming lack of color in the magazine. No, it wasn’t printed in black and white, I mean pigmentation color. Probably 90%, if not more, of the people profiled in First Freedom were of European descent, in other words, white. I am probably not far off in thinking that the demographic for First Freedom was the average conservative-thinking, middle-class, middle-American. The magazine was written for the lifestyle of someone who liked his (and to a small extent “her”) Budweiser or Miller Lite, his country music, and his NASCAR.

(Again, I am just making a point about the demographic, and I am not saying there is anything wrong with this. Magazines have to sell and First Freedom knew its demographic and catered to it well.)

But what about the gun-owner who did not live in the fields of Wyoming or could not give a whit about Travis Tritt or a fart about Dale Earnhart? What about the gun-owner who had other interests, ones that did not fit the white, conservative stereotype? What about the completely legal gun owners who liked hip-hop and basketball players not named Karl Malone? First Freedom never addressed that demographic.

To fill the void left by First Freedom, and to give urban gun owners something to read, I would like to propose the idea for a publication called “Urban Armsman: A Magazine For the Urban Gun Collector“. Although Urban Armsman would borrow a few things from First Freedom, sections such as new products and incidences where gun owners protected themselves, Urban Armsman would also provide gun owners in cities with information on where to shoot, where they can carry legally, and what laws and regulations they should be concerned with. It would also have several articles on education and proper use, promoting safety as its number one priority, as well as features on celebrity gun collections. Who wouldn’t want to read about the weapons stashes of T.I., Shyne, and Plaxico Burress? And you know Puff Daddy has to have some sort of firearm protection nearby.

I know there are some cities where carrying a gun is as legal as carrying a vial of crack, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t potential readers in every city. For those areas, Urban Armsman would similar to High Times or some car racing magazines. The question is not whether or not there is a market, the question is how much longer will urban gun owners put up with articles on Dick Cheney, safaris in Africa, and the North Dakota high school champion clay shooting team?

(Photo found at http://andrewmiguelez.com/portfolio/html/graphic_design.html.)