Some of you may have followed the brouhaha down below occasioned by my post poking fun at Kerry’s over-the-top shotgun grip. Now on a “regular guy” swing throught the midwest, this photo shows that Kerry usually and normally grips his gun with his left thumb on top of the barrel. If he actually shot with it there, maybe that’s why he missed the clay target just before this photo was taken. (Also note the repeated absence of eye and ear protection.)
Stay tuned. I may have more to say about this odd thumb placement if I receive permission to reprint some emails that were sent to me on this crucial issue. (Actually, I don’t really care where Kerry puts his thumb, but I do care when I’m accused of spreading lies for finding his placement odd.)
UPDATE
I suspect that most of you are not as interested as I am in proper, or improper, ways to hold a shotgun, but it’s my blog so you’ll just have to indulge me.
My suggestion a few posts below that photos of Kerry pheasant hunting that showed him gripping his gun with his left thumb curled over the top of the barrels may be his “Dukakis-in-a-tank” moment elicited a number of responses, a few from Kerry supporters who accused me of everything between “spreading lies” and posting “inaccurate, incorrect information.” Fuel was added to their fire when Steve Smith, the editor of Pointing Dog Journal and The Retriever Journal and several books on wingshooting, and no Kerry supporter (“I’d walk across hot rocks to vote against Kerry,” he wrote) posted a comment that appeared to defend Kerry’s unorthodox grip. “Instinctive shooters (those who don’t “aim” but instead “point” in the English manner),” Smith wrote, “grip the barrels with the left hand as Kerry is.”
Boy was I surprised. I was so surprised I sent Steve an email that included the following:
I appreciate your comment on my post. If we could step outside the partisan invective for a moment, I really am curious about your seeming defense of what one commenter called the “bayonet grip” (thumb over the barrels).
I really do defer to your knowledge in this area. I have probably a
normal or average amount of hunting/shooting experience, more when
I was kid than recently: quail, doves, skeet, etc. I’m no expert, but I
really never have seen anyone shoot a shotgun with that grip, at least
on purpose. Do some hunters really do that?
Steve replied, in part (quoted with permission):
John,
Thanks for the e-mail….
The Brits teach that the forend is to hold the barrels onto the action, not to be used as a gripping point (even though it’s checkered). The hand is not wrapped completely around the barrels; instead, the fingers of the left (assuming RH shooter) hand wrap up and around the edge of the right barrel, and the thumb lies on the side of the left barrel, parallel with it and pointing forward. You can then look down the rib between your fingers and thumb at the bird. (Emphasis added)
Hmm, very interesting, I thought. And I replied:
This makes perfect sense to me … , but that’s not what Kerry was doing in that one photo I linked. There, his thumb is wrapped around the top of the barrel, almost touching his index finger on the other side. I’m not saying he can’t/doesn’t shoot (as some of my commenters thought I was saying), only that that photo doesn’t provide good evidence of it.
And Steve replied:
Actually, I shot against a guy in a sporting clays tournament (he whipped my butt) who shot that way. He held his head up, wrapped his hand around the barrels like he was going to squeeze a lemon, and used his instincts — it was almost shooting from the hip.
Having said that, if Kerry is shooting that way, he’s only the second guy
I’ve ever seen that could do it — I sure can’t.
Now I suppose it could be said that, considering the great issues that face us, where Kerry puts his thumb is trivial, but being called a spreader of lies, even on a trivial matter, is not.
Steve Smith is a scholar and a gentleman, and I appreciate his letting me quote his emails.
UPDATE II (8 July)
Believe it or not, here’s yet another picture of Shooter Kerry with his thumb over the top of his barrels (and, again, with no eye protection), also commented upon here.
UPDATE III (9 July)
From Victor Davis Hanson (via InstaPundit):
Only belatedly has John Kerry grasped that his shrill supporters are often not just trivial but stark-raving mad. If he doesn’t quickly jump into some Levis, shoot off a shotgun, and start hanging out in Ohio, he will lose this election and do so badly. . . .
He should just be careful how he holds it when cameras are pointed at him….
Let’s be clear where we are then –
Before, you were certain that anyone who held the gun even remotely like that is massivly in error.
Now, obviously, you know you were wrong. Of course, instead of apologizing to the people you misinformed, it’s asscovering time!
Moving forward, the question is now how far around the gun Kerry’s thumb was wrapped. According to Steve Smith, author of More and Better Pheasant Hunting, says that, and I quote, again “Kerry’s pose with the gun is the real deal.” That’s after looking at the picture, as you well know – because he posted it on your blog!
You attempt, desperatly, to paint Mr. Smith into your corner by framing the issue – “that’s not what Kerry was doing in that one photo I linked,” even though you know that Mr. Smith ALREADY LOOKED AT THE PHOTO, and determined that he was “demonstrating pretty good form.”
No, the fact of the matter is that you’re still desperatly looking at a small photo trying to smear someone you don’t like, and, even worse, now you’re trying to drag someone, who NEVER SAID YOU WERE RIGHT into your smear kicking and screaming. But he STILL didn’t join you – if you read Mr. Smith’s reply, he NEVER said that it looked to him like Kerry was shooting that way.
Hypocrite: Not only do I not “obviously” know I’m wrong. I know that I’m not wrong. I thought Steve Smith’s original comment was mistaken, and so I asked him. You would like to continue relying on it, and not on his extensive modifications of it, and so you do. That’s your privilege, but it’s an abuse of that privilege to accuse people who disagree with you, and provide evidence supporting their disagreement, of lying.
Meanwhile, here’s a challenge: show me a picture of anyone firing a shotgun with his or her thumb of the non-trigger hand over the top of barrels. Just to demonstrate that pictures of shotgun shooters are easy to find, here’s a small number that turned up in response to a Google search. There are a number of variations shown here, since there is no one “proper” grip. But none of them has their thumb knuckle on top of the barrel. If you think that’s proper form, show me some pictures of shooting schools teaching it or actual shooters using it.
There are three gazillion more where these came from.
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Here’s another challenge: who will volunteer to be on the same range with a guy who doesn’t keep his eye downrange where his barrel’s pointed when his finger’s on the trigger?
Around here, people who do that are corrected once or twice and then asked to leave the range. Their business isn’t worth the danger they pose to others.
Not being an expert on the proper placement of the thumb on the shotgun, I was more concerned with the fact he had his finger on the trigger when, according to the photo caption, he was not shooting. Kinda reminds me of the Gore photo that circulated during the 2000 campaign with him looking down the barrel of his gun in Vietnam.
BTW, I sent your previous post to a friend with B/C’04 and he loved it.
Kerry’s knuckle is not “on top of the barrel.”
Steven Smith has never in anything you or he has posted an “extensive modification,” of what he wrote. You browbeat him into saying that “if Kerry is shooting that way…”
Of course, he’s not. His thumb is NOT over the top of the barels. The picture dosen’t demonstrate this. Steve Smith didn’t see it. You’re just seeing what you want to see so you can smear people.
Hypocrite: Perhaps your monitor isn’t up to snuff. Either that, or you’re in denial, which I suppose is understandable. This photo, which I linked in my original post, quite clearly shows Kerry’s left thumb over the top of his barrels, with its tip almost touching his index finger on the right side of the barrels. As someone else commented, that’s the way one would hold a shotgun if it had a bayonet attached.
Steve Smith wrote to me, and I quoted above, his description of the grip he originally meant to defend:
Leaving aside the ludicrous assertion that Smith was “browbeaten” to say that, if you think his description fits the photos I linked then your powers of observation would seem to be on a par with the degree of civility you demonstrate in discourse.
I live in Texas, and I have seen people use that grip. Usually, it’s when they only want to fire a shotgun in a general direction and either don’t particularly want to hit somethng or don’t care if they hit anything. Drunks firing off guns on New Year’s and the Fourth of July hold their guns like that – but I try to stay very, very far away from them.
Interestingly, my great-grandmother held her gun like that. She taught the grandkids to shoot like that, too. But she did it with a rifle, not a shotgun, and she was deadly accurate shooting from the hip. Of course, she grew up in the 1880’s and 90’s, when she and other settlers in the area were still called on to defend themselves from Indian raids. As my mom put it, when you were sent out with the gun to hunt rabbits or squirrels for supper and given 2 bullets, you were expected to bring home 2 rabbits/squirrels.
Yes, we use a .22 to hunt squirrels – what idiot would fill one full of those little pellets from a shotgun? You can’t eat them! (But some of my coworkers from Michigan still think I’m pulling their leg on this.)
By the way as a point of interest, I used to be a competitive shooter, both modern and black powder. I was better with a pistol. But I was really good a throwing a tomahawk… (Seriously, I used to teach that particular skill).
Steve Smith saw that photo which he described as, and I quote “demonstrating pretty good form.” He has never retracted that statement – under pressure from you to say something about someone who wrapped their hand entirely around the barrels, he said that “if” Kerry used that grip, not that Kerry used that grip.
When I look at that picture, I see his hand as being 10 pixels long, with a 4 pixel wide barrel. If you can make a determination how far apart Kerry’s finger and thumb are from that, clearly you have some sort of magic power.
I am an odd mix. I am a conservative generally but not with respect to animals and hunting. I am a confessed avid anti-hunter. So there is no board for me. :) But I thought I’d post here that when I tried posting multiple times another angle of the Kerry/Hunting debacle on the johnkerry.com blog, I kept getting censored by the Dems. I cite multiple Kerry quotations and juxtapose the words next to pictures of Kerry in a way that, to me and others, that Kerry is just a say-anything politician. I find it completely hypocritical (but not at all surprising) that Democrats are censoring me.
If you want to see the pics, see the link above.
Cheers
Look, Shotgun posing or not, Veteran or not, Kerry has been one of the most vehement anti-gun senators in recent memory.
Does he actually hunt with a shotgun?
@#$$ no he doesn’t. . .anymore than Bush lands fighter planes on aircraft carriers.
Would I go hunting with Kerry?
Steve Smith may be a fraud. He seems to be hitting the web sites with his BS. This is the second website where he has explained Kerry’s horrible gun handling has an English style. He claims to hate Kerry, but has spent a lot of time defending him. There is also a Jake Smith associated with those two Mags, but no mention of a Steve Smith.