BiggAndyy the Magazine

Maybe Jim Zumbo would rather have been run over with a Zamboni than weather the firestorm his blog created last month. No sponsors, no magazine, no outdoors show. The Gun Community, and all of its internal factions, united as one swarm and completely engulfed the life of Jim Zumbo in a matter of hours.

But let’s keep a level head about all this; it was not the people, nor the hunters, nor the collectors, nor the bloggers, nor the NRA, that pulled the trigger on Jim’s career. It wasn’t even Jim himself. Only the people who sign the paychecks at the magazine and the factory and the station had the final say so in whether Jim would remain on staff.

In the final analysis, the firing of Jim Zumbo will not be an issue of Constitutional rights but it will probably be seen as a financial business decision. Jim wasn’t fired because he betrayed the Second Amendment in public. Many so called “gun supporters” trample over the Second Amendment publicly everyday. But the outcry from the gun community was so swift and so startling that the sponsors terminated him in fear of public boycotts and defections to competitor products.

Some folk that I respect have commented that they were heartened to see such a swift and unified response from the gun community. That the Second Amendment crowd “bared its teeth” and showed it was not afraid of a fight, even from one of its own. But who blinked first?

It has been pointed out that Jim has never connected his apology with the Second Amendment, but then again, his comments were never connected TO the Second Amendment. His comments were about hunting and what should and should not be allowed on the field. Most states have regulations prohibiting one form of firearm or another from the hunting field. So what was the difference with Jim’s statement?

Was it his condescending attitude he, as a game hunter, has towards those who collect and fire military styled or surplussed weapons that set everyone off? There has always been a simmering animosity between “hunters” and “shooters”, but in this case both sides piled on Jim.

Was it the fact that he called people who enjoyed owning and shooting military surplussed weapons “terrorists”? That is more to the hunter/shooter tension, much more rude, but still solidly in that camp.

I think if we toss in the mix that many states are sending up trial balloons of some sort of AWB legislation and stir everything together we get the recipe that sent Jim Zumbo to the unemployment line.

In the immortal words of Chuck Noll, “Maybe he’s ready for his life’s work.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 5:01 pm and is filed under ATF, Blogging, Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Tags: jim zumbo, zumbonied, second, amendment, constitution, finances, outdoors, hunting, collection, military, surplus, blogging, chuck noll, terrorists, NRA, Remmington