Judging from their sins of omission (failing to cover the ATF’s Fast and Furious scandal with anything remotely resembling journalistic vigor) and their sins of commission (a spurious series on the origins of “crime guns”), the Washington Post is seriously anti-2A. As with most major media, the WaPo aren’t aware of their bias. And so weird stories like this one rear their metaphorical heads—only to be frozen in the glare of TTAG’s symbolic headlights. Or something like that. Anyway, deer! At the FBI gun range! Check out the WaPo’s odd take on this “amazing” intersection of guns and “Bambi”:
Call it a playground for Bambi and G-Men, where imaginary criminals are hunted and deer are the spectators.
The 547-acre FBI Academy, where some of the nation’s best marksmen fire off more than 1 million bullets every month, happens to be one of the safest places for deer during hunting season . . .
On a December afternoon, deer grazed above one of the academy’s 16 practice shooting ranges. They stood just 15 feet away from the paper targets. Nearby, shots popped loudly from a Colt M4 Carbine rifle, and the white-tailed deer did not flinch.
“They’re pretty immune to the sound,” said Sean Boyle, supervisory special agent bomb technician and principal firearms instructor for the Critical Incident Response Group based at the academy. The deer typically graze on top of the berm, about 15 feet away from the targets and rarely go directly in the line of fire. Boyle said he doesn’t recall an instance where a deer was shot accidentally.
“It’s like they think, ‘We’ve pushed the limit for this far, and all our generations have pushed the limit for this far,’” Boyle said. “They’re just so docile around here. They don’t know what a gun is.”
Clearly, Sean Boyle missed his calling; he should have been a ruminant profiler. Just as the Washington Post missed theirs. They should have been the newspaper they were back when Nixon was not a crook.
That would just be too much to resist. I saw a rabbit get zapped at an outdoor range, but a whitetail would be quite the prize.
While in basic training at Ft Leonard Wood, Mo back in the late sixties, our platoon had to wait for another platoon to finish their M14 range time. As in this picture a deer (just one) popped up on the ridge above the targets, and the DI gave a sort of unofficial okay for the recruits to have at it. Well that was one lucky deer, for no one in the platoon could hit it, and it just walked away. Needless to say, that particular DI was noon too happy, for he had thoughts of venison steaks in the freezer. I think that platoon is still in double step around the barracks!