Take a look at this photograph:
Okay. This is President Obama. He is shooting an over/under shotgun, typically used for shooting trap or skeet. This is a customized over/under shotgun, as you can tell from the puff of smoke from the top and by zooming in on the photo — this shotgun has been ported, a modification reputed to reduce muzzle lift upon firing. This is not done by gun manufacturers because a) it doesn’t really do a whole lot for muzzle lift, and b) it reduces the velocity of the pellets coming out of the front of the gun. It is, however, done by a lot of skeet shooters in hopes of allowing them to get a second shot off more rapidly if the first one misses (same reason skeet shooters typically use a double-barrel shotgun rather than a pump or semi-automatic, it is faster to get a second shot off with a double-barrel shotgun). In addition it appears to have a custom front sight rather than the typical single bead sight of an off-the-shelf shotgun.
In other words, this is *not* some shotgun that a White House staffer was told “Get a shotgun for a press event” and sent off to the nearest gun store for an off-the-shelf shotgun. This shotgun has been personalized, whether for Obama, or for some staffer from whom Obama borrowed it. In other words, either Obama or someone on his staff knows enough about guns to get it modified rather than leave it OEM, both with a better front sight and with the porting.
There have been people who laugh at the way Obama is holding his head but that appears to be both because there *is* muzzle lift (i.e., the gun was in line with his eyes at the time the trigger was pulled), plus an issue with the 2-d nature of the photograph — if Obama’s head is tilted he is likely looking down the barrel with his right eye, but all we can see is his left eye, which is below the barrel and has a good view of the breech. Still, tilting the head that way is *not* a good way to hit what you’re shooting at, it tends to make you shoot down and to the left of your target, though in fairness if the flinger is to the right of Obama, that’s the direction that the clay target will be falling. In addition, some people have criticized the way that the stock is hitting Obama’s shoulder. However, if the shotgun originally was aiming at a high elevation and then came down to this low elevation, that may be why the top of the stock is not firmly against Obama’s shoulder, i.e., it was against his shoulder when the shotgun was pointing up, but departed from his shoulder as the shotgun barrel dropped. In any event, both of those are irrelevant to the point at hand — Obama is shooting skeet in this photo with a shotgun that is typical of those used by skeet shooters, i.e., *not* some random shotgun grabbed from a gun store or from his security detail.
So let’s see, we have 9/11 denialists, we call them “Truthers”. We have Obama birth certificate denialists, we call them “Birthers”. What shall we call Obama skeet shooting denialists and their annoying whine? Oh wait, I know, we can call them “Skeeters”!
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Skeeters have the most annoying whine.
Indeed
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I see that you now consider yourself a gun expert. Do you actually own any guns that you shoot all the time?
If you fire off several boxes of shells with a 12 gauge pump action Mossberg, you’ll have a bruised shoulder at the end of the day. Ask me how I know
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Well, I put a pad on the butt of my 50 caliber Hawken, that bitch will beat the shit out of my skinny bony ass without it.
For the folks who insist — usually hysterically — that guns are intrinsically safe, this should be mandatory reading: http://ohhshoot.blogspot.com/
Unbelievable, the over-”analysis” of every bit of information coming out about this president.
I’d love to see a “real gun expert” exposed to such a level of scrutiny.
Have the skeeters started saying it’s a Photoshop job? Y’know, like the birth certificate. In these days of sophisticated information manipulation technology, you don’t have to believe in anything you don’t WANT to believe in. Just cry that it’s a fake. Y’know, like the moon landings.