Outdoor writer Jack Ballard has launched a campaign for the Democratic nomination for US Senate seat in Montana. In an interview with Tom Gresham on Sunday, Ballard indicated his support for Democrat-backed gun control measures like magazine capacity limits and more. In other words, outdoor writer Jack Ballard has outed himself as a virulent Fudd.
Fudd, as defined in the Urban Dictionary:
Slang term for a “casual” gun owner; eg; a person who typically only owns guns for hunting or shotgun sports and does not truly believe in the true premise of the second amendment. These people also generally treat owners/users of so called “non sporting” firearms like handguns or semiautomatic rifles with unwarranted scorn or contempt.
Listening to Ballard shuck and jive on the gun control question (it starts at about 25:20) provides a lot of entertainment. He claims there’s a big difference between western Democrats and coastal Democrats.
Gresham redirects him from what Democrats used to be — forty or fifty years ago — to today’s Democrat party and its platform to ban certain types of firearms and take them away from gun owners.
The GunTalk host asks Ballard how he plans to convince Montana gun owners that he will tell Democrat leaders to pound sand when they want to pass more gun control legislation.
Ballard makes it pretty clear that won’t happen if he’s elected.
Resorting to a typical talking point, Ballard claims he’s hearing from fellow Fudds who who tell him that “we need to have a conversation” on guns and gun control in this country. Gresham pressed him on that, saying that all he hears from Democrats is “we want to take your guns away.”
At that point Ballard came out in support for banning private firearm transfers of guns (at about 29:00 minutes) and for magazine (which Ballard repeatedly calls clips) capacity limits, too.
Gresham didn’t let Ballard weasel his way out of straightforward questions and Ballard squirmed. He claimed that universal background checks only cover the sale of guns…even though the laws, as written, prevent owners from lending guns to others, even family members.
To his credit, Gresham aggressively called Ballard’s out on either his ignorance of UBC laws, or his willfully claiming that they don’t cover what they do. Ballard almost lost his cool, raising his voice trying to spin his way out of answering the GunTalk guru’s sharp questioning.
From there, the conversation turns to mag bans (at about 33:00). “In relation to magazine capacity,” Ballard begins. “What I’m hearing from people is,” Ballard says (for about the third time). “If we reduce magazine capacity and that reduced the body count in those mass shootings, is that more [unintelligible].”
“What’s the right number for a magazine?” Gresham immediately presses him.
“In relation to legitimate purposes for using a firearm, recreational shooting, hunting, personal defense, if you can’t gonna get it done in 10, you ain’t gonna get it done in 30,” Ballard says.
“OK, would you also apply that to police?” Gresham asks.
Of course, Ballard says no.
Gresham then framed it in terms of his daughter – or Ballard’s – facing more than one attacker and needing that 11th round.
Ballard only repeated his talking point that if you can’t get it done in ten rounds, you’re not going to get it done in eleven. Even if it’s his own daughter.
Ballard has just joined the Board of Directors of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. According to the OWAA website:
Ballard, a 21-year-member of OWAA, has two previous terms on the board and one as OWAA’s treasurer. He currently serves as an Endowment Trustee for the organization.
With so-called “friends” like Jack Ballard, who needs the Brady Campaign? It appears that the noted outdoor writer may have Zumbo’d himself.
What’s a Zumbo?
From the Miami Herald, circa 2007:
Noted outdoors writer in freefall from legend to pariah
In what might be considered the fastest career collapse in history, Jim Zumbo – for decades one of the nation’s most visible outdoor writers and broadcasters – has lost everything in a matter of only a few days.
Zumbo lives near Cody, Wyo., and has long been hunting editor of Outdoor Life magazine. He also has (had) a TV show and has been published in countless outdoors publications. Most of his writings have been on hunting, and he has long been considered a standard-bearer for all things dear to the sport.
All of which is gone now – permanently, it would seem – because of a few paragraphs he posted on his Outdoor Life blog on Feb. 16.
That day, Zumbo had been shooting prairie dogs with various Remington employees (“executives,” by one report), and one of their guides had mentioned in passing that an increasing number of hunters were using assault-style weapons, particularly for prairie dog shooting.
This amazed Zumbo, who, that evening – tired from the day’s outing, he later said – quickly updated his blog.
“Sorry, folks,” he wrote, “in my humble opinion, these things have no place in hunting. We don’t need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them, which is an obvious concern. I’ve always been comfortable with the statement that hunters don’t use assault rifles. We’ve always been proud of our sporting firearms.”
Zumbo issued an apology shortly thereafter. But to no avail.
Only days later he was fired by Outdoor Life (he wrote his first story for the magazine in 1962); excommunicated, in effect, by the National Rifle Association (according to his website, he had appeared promotionally with NRA officials in 40 cities); and disassociated from his TV show by Remington and Mossy Oak, among other advertisers.
The TV show, on the Outdoor Channel, has not been broadcast since…
The Gresham interview looks like a full-on self-Zumbo’ing. Time will tell if the People of the Gun feel the same way.
