I Can't Believe Its In The New York Times!!!

Has the New York Times just discredited everything else it ever published on firearms??? Today's Times has a great article on a great Vermont pastime - fish shooting. Read the whole story, but one thing you ought to know is it starts with these incredible four paragraphs

ST. ALBANS BAY, Vt. — The hunter's prey darted into the shadows, just out of reach of Henry Demar's gun.

"Come on, stand up and be counted," Mr. Demar whispered excitedly. "There was a ripple that came out of the weeds. There's something out there."

Dressed in camouflage, gripping his .357 Magnum, Mr. Demar was primed to shoot. But this time, no such luck. With a flick of its tail, his quarry — a slick silvery fish — was gone.

Fish shooting is a sport in Vermont, and every spring, hunters break out their artillery — high-caliber pistols, shotguns, even AK-47's — and head to the marshes to exercise their right to bear arms against fish.

Yes folks, thats right . . . the New York Times just admitted that people hunt with AK-47s . . . I can't believe that!!!!!!!!!!!!

And you know, if they are out there engaged in a legitimate, John Kerry approved, activity like hunting with their fully automatic AK-47s then why are people all worked up about the far less powerful and dangerous semi automatical so-called "assault weapon" replica's of an AK-47?

There is art, or at least science, to shooting fish, aficionados say, and it has nothing to do with a barrel. Most fish hunters do not want to shoot the actual fish, because then "you can't really eat them," Ms. Paquette said. "They just kind of shatter."

Instead, said Mr. Demar, "you try to shoot just in front of the fish's nose or head." The bullet torpedoes to the bottom and creates "enough concussion that it breaks the fish's air bladder and it floats to the surface."

Often the target is a female fish come to spawn in shallow water, accompanied by several male acolytes who might also be killed, or stunned, by the concussion.

"If you shoot a high-powered rifle, you can get a big mare and six or seven little bucks," Mr. Paquette said.

Permitted from March 25 to May 25, only on Lake Champlain, fish shooting has probably existed for a century. It also used to be legal in New York, which borders the huge apostrophe-shaped lake.

Virginia used to have several fish-shooting areas, said Alan Weaver, a fish biologist with Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Now, Mr. Weaver said, the only place is the Clinch River in remote Scott County, where, six weeks a year, people can shoot bottom-feeders like "quill-back suckers and red-horse suckers." Virginia is the only other state where fish shooting is still legal, Vermont officials said.

I knew there was a reason I moved from Vermont to Virginia!!!


Read the whole thing. We really are winning this fight!!

Advocates crossed the state in a near-blizzard to one public hearing in the late 1980's, recalled John Hall, a spokesman for Vermont's Department of Fish and Wildlife. In 1994, fish-shooters "outnumbered the people who spoke against it by about four to one," said Brian Chipman, a state fisheries biologist.