Word: birdshot
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...Tobin Armstrong testified before Congress that he sometimes found illegal immigrants dead of dehydration in the unforgiving brush of his 49,300-acre ranch. It was there that Vice President Dick Cheney, out with a hunting party that included Tobin's daughter Katharine, accidentally sprayed attorney Harry Whittington with birdshot. What took place in the hours before and after the Feb. 11 shooting is a largely mundane tale that became extraordinary when, for days, Cheney seemed unwilling to tell it. The Internet is still excreting rumors...
...text of the depositions his office conducted? There is also a small and geeky but persistent debate over whether Cheney might have been closer to Whittington than 30 yds., the figure in the sheriff's report. Some gun experts say from that distance, it would be unlikely that birdshot could penetrate Whittington's clothes and chest wall. Others agree with Jon Nordby, an analyst with Final Analysis Forensic of University Place, Wash., who says, "It is certainly possible, and I've seen it. I had a case where a BB went through a jacket at 90 ft. and through...
Fortunately, that wasn't the result of this mishap. Three days after the shooting, Whittington, who turns 79 next month, experienced a minor heart attack caused by a piece of birdshot that lodged in or near his heart. But by Friday he was well enough to leave the hospital. A lifelong Republican who is also respected by Democrats for helping reform Texas' prison system, Whittington needled reporters as he left. "This past weekend encompassed all of us in a cloud of misfortune and sadness that is not easy to explain, especially to those who are not familiar with the great...
Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington with a 28-gauge double-barreled shotgun. Unlike rifles, which fire single bullets over a wider area. Usually, the larger the game, the larger the pellets used. Because Cheney was hunting quail, he was using birdshot-not buckshot, which is bigger. Whittington was hit in the face, neck and chest at a reported distance of about...
...this thing too, even though many of them don't know the difference between a .28-gauge shotgun and an any-caliber rifle. The chief difference, of course (and the relevant one here) is that a shotgun of this modest size barely constitutes a serious weapon when loaded with birdshot of the type that Cheney used. Its hard enough for such pellets to pierce a quail's heart, let alone penetrate a man's, and the fact that one did so is a testament not to Cheney's gross negligence (that question still needs more exploring) but to his supreme...