I Don’t Get the entire killing Bambi for fun thing …

I think I was a natural born Buddhist because killing things for sport is something I have never understood and will never understand. I do understand the need to eat. I understand that if you chose to eat meat you’ve likely had a butcher do your killing and it’s likely done quickly and humanely and with a certain knowledge of exactly what you’re doing.  I just find that different than when you go out and stalk a living creature and you kill it just because it’s standing there and you’re out there having fun.

Here’s the kind’ve bloodlust I’m talking about.

Sarah Palin made sure her now-defunct “reality” show included the scene of her shooting a caribou, although hunting experts questioned some of the details and wondered why it took five shots to bring down the animal. Ms. Palin dismissed such criticisms, telling a Kansas City crowd, “I have caribou blood under my fingernails still.”

I can see Tina Fey doing that line on SNL, can’t you?  That line is a little closer to psychopathy than I’m just putting dinner on the table.  Still, we some how have gotten to a place where stalking and killing animals for fun is something politicians put out there for all to see.  Why?  Is it a way of saying “See, I’m a real man”?  I also wonder how much the animal suffered given the five shots.

Once describing himself as a “lifelong hunter,” Mitt Romney had to backtrack, acknowledging that “lifelong hunter” meant shooting at “small varmints” now and then.

Rick Perry let it be known that he once went mano a mano with a coyote he said was threatening his dog, killing the beast with the handgun he carried while jogging. (Just where did he tuck that .380 Ruger on his morning run through the cactus and tumbleweeds, by the way?)

As a presidential candidate, John Kerry once borrowed a double-barreled shotgun and camo outfit to bag geese and an important photo op. (Wasn’t it enough that he’d pursued and killed an enemy soldier armed with a rocket-propelled grenade in Vietnam, where he’d been awarded a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts?)

So, the President had to prove he has shot a gun and thankfully, for me, it was on clay pigeons instead of  Bambi’s mother.  I find it odd, however, that you can still sympathize with hunters given you choose not to actually kill something in the process.  There seems to be still something primal and insecure in some men that they believe their right of passage is bringing home a kill.  Republicans didn’t believe that a commie pinko, socialist muslim peacenik tree hugger could hold a gun so the White House released this photo.

The White House has released a photo of President Obama skeet shooting at Camp David from August, 2012, attempting to quell a controversy that arose when Obama said that he sympathized with hunters because he frequently went shooting himself.

 “Attn skeet birthers. Make our day – let the photoshop conspiracies begin!,” former White House advisor David Plouffe tweeted in a message containing a link to a photo of Obama brandishing a shot gun and wearing ear muffs and sun glasses.Conservative critics questioned the veracity of the Obama’s claims of skeet shooting because he had never been seen publicly shooting a gun.

“If he is a skeet shooter, why have we not heard of this,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said in a television interview after Obama’s remarks were made public.

“Why have we not seen photos,” Blackburn continued. “Why has he not referenced it at any point in time as we have had this gun debate that is ongoing?”

Yup,  If you’re an Amuriken politician, you gotta put those photos out there proving your man enough to kill–at least–a small “varmint”.

Although Palin, Blackburn, and other women in politics are joining men in touting their love of firearms (and women can now be considered for combat positions in the US military), it’s mainly men – just as it is with the question of military service, especially those who might have served in Vietnam but didn’t, including Cheney and Romney. (There no doubt are darkly psychological issues here too, but we won’t go there.)

Actually, I’d like some one to explore the “darkly psychological issues” that seem to imply our politicians have to know their way around guns, if not, explicitly enjoy killing animals.   The discussion around the photo–taken back in August while he was celebrating his birthday at Camp David–is itself puzzling to me.

The notion of the president taking aim at targets flung into the air captivated some in the political and social media worlds at a time when he is pushing Congress to enact sweeping restrictions on high-capacity rifles and magazines.

Conservatives scoffed, comics mocked, a congresswoman challenged him to a skeet-shooting contest, a fake picture of an armed Mr. Obama circulated on the Internet, and the White House tried to make the whole matter go away.

“It was a surprise to a lot of people in the industry when we saw that and heard that,” said Michael Hampton Jr., the executive director of the National Skeet Shooting Association, whose 35,000 members do not include the president.

Mr. Obama is hardly the first politician to draw scorn for boasting of experience with guns. In 2007, during his first presidential campaign, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts was ridiculed when he said, “I’ve always been a rodent and rabbit hunter — small varmints, if you will.” In 2004, John Kerry, then a presidential candidate and now secretary of state, was lampooned for showing up in camouflage to go hunting less than two weeks before the election.

The latest commotion has its origins in the interview Mr. Obama gave to The New Republic, now owned by Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder and former Obama campaign aide. In the interview, Franklin Foer, the magazine’s editor, referred to the fight over gun control and asked the president if he had ever fired a gun.

“Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” Mr. Obama said.

“The whole family?” Mr. Foer asked.

“Not the girls,” he said, “but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.”

Mr. Obama went on to say that the reality of guns in urban areas differs from that in rural areas. “So it’s trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months,” he said. “And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes.”

I grew up in the part of the country where hunting and shooting are considered a way of life. Neighbors brag about their latest gun attachments and the top spotting scopes they own like women brag about their new dresses or handbags.  I live down here surrounded by folks that have to hunt and shoot things to put food on the table.  I still can’t get used to it, which again, makes me thing I was a natural born Buddhist.  However, putting food on your table out of necessity is a far cry from taking a huge gun–ala insane Ted Nugent–and then bragging about having caribou blood under your fingernails.  Can some one explain this to me?  Why do we want politicians with some degree of bloodlust?