Kerry: sitting duck

October 21, 2004
Warren Tribune Chronicle

By STEPHEN ORAVECZ

AUSTINTOWN - Shirley Williams of Hubbard said Wednesday that she loves her gun and called the Democratic presidential candidate a backstabber.

Williams, 71, was one of about two dozen people who attended a news conference at the Austintown Sports Center, where two representatives of the Bush-Cheney campaign said the president was the best choice for sportsmen and gun owners. The event was held in anticipation of Kerry's duck hunting trip this morning in Mahoning County.

Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association also has called a press conference today in Howland in response to Kerry's hunting trip.

A Kerry spokesman said Kerry supports the Second Amendment, and the NRA has not been truthful about his record.

A member of the Vienna Fish and Game Club and Ohio Gun Collectors and treasurer of the Trumbull County Federation of Sportsman, Williams said, "I think Kerry has been backstabbing us.''

"He has not been pro-gun for 20 years,'' said Williams, who said she had been a registered Democrat since 1965. "I watched this man for 20 years in the Senate vote against us, and all of a sudden he's a hunter. I can't buy it.''

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Mike Budzik, former chief of the Ohio Division of Wildlife and Ohio chair of the Bush-Cheney '04 Ohio Sportsmen for Bush Coalition, said Bush is the best candidate for sportsman "because the outdoors is a way of life for the president.''

Budzik praised Bush's record of preserving or expanding habitats important to hunters and anglers. For example, he said, Bush is committed to no net loss in wetlands. This is significant for Ohio, which has lost 90 percent of its wetlands.

"President Bush is not ashamed of his hunting, fishing and outdoor heritage. He's not a closet hunter.'' Budzik said. "He's not ashamed to associate with people who you see here. He's one of us.''

Budzik said a closet hunter is one who goes out and and hunts and does not want to tell anybody.

"He's ashamed of it,'' Budzik said.

Asked if he was characterizing Kerry as a closet hunter, Budzik said, "I'm having a hard time figuring out what he is.

Former state Rep. Michael Verich, a Democrat, said it was no mistake the National Rifle Association came to the Mahoning Valley on Oct. 13 to issue its endorsement of Bush.

"It's kind of ironic that Sen. Kerry is coming the the Mahoning Valley to do duck hunting and serve as a decoy when his record is just the opposite of that.'' Verich said. "We have Sen. Kerry who now is strong pro-gun, but his record shows otherwise.''

Kathy Roeder, Ohio spokesman for the Kerry campaign, said Budzik's characterization of Bush's record on preserving habitats for sportsmen would not fly and that Bush has failed to develop a long-term plan to protect habitats. And she repeated that Kerry is a gun owner who likes to hunt.

Roeder said she is not concerned about the NRA making a second trip to the Mahoning Valley in one week. She said Kerry's "actions show what he believes in more than a news conference and empty rhetoric.''

She said the Bush campaign cannot talk about the economy in Ohio and the war in Iraq "is a mess. They have run out of things they can talk about so they talk about the Second Amendment.''

But she said even there, Kerry's position is in line with that of most Americans.

Commentary:
Sorry, Ms. Roeder, but it isn't the Bush campaign that is making an issue of the Second Amendment.

John Kerry made an issue of his history as a Vietnam war protestor by trumpeting his four months on a swift boat as a reason to elect him President.

In similar fashion, he is making an issue of the Second Amendment by accepting as a gift a gun which he is currently trying to ban. He is making an issue of the Second Amendment by dragging media into a store in southern Ohio, talking down to clerks as he said "Can I get me a hunting license?" He is making an issue of the Second Amendment by staging a photo op in eastern Ohio donning a newly purchased camo coat, yet refusing even to carry his bird off the hunting field.

John Kerry's problem on guns is not with the Bush campaign - it is with the grassroots gun-owners in this state and across the nation. He started it, and we will finish it on Nov. 2.

Click here to read about the anti-gun record Kerry says is being "misrepresented".

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