Here's a gun to fit the Veep's style

By BOB KERR
PROVIDENCE JOURNAL
You might want to take a look at this little baby, Mr. Vice President. It's lightweight, air-cooled, magazine-fed and designed for shoulder or hip firing on automatic or semiautomatic.
If you're wondering about those cold weather shoots in Wyoming, you'll be interested to know that the bottom of the trigger guard opens to provide access to the trigger while wearing winter mittens.
Considering your most recent little shoot-'em-up, you'll also be interested to know that the upper receiver/barrel assembly on this firearm has a fully adjustable rear sight and a compensator which helps keep the muzzle down during firing.
Just let that stock drop into your palm, Mr. Vice President. It just makes you want to track down some feathered little critter and blast away, doesn't it? Is there a sweeter sight than a patch of quail feathers floating in the cool Texas air?
Actually, Mr. Vice President, you might be somewhat familiar with this rifle.
It's the M16A2. It's an updated version of the M16, which, of course, hundreds of thousands of your generation carried in Vietnam. It was quite the pack of firepower as long as you didn't let a couple grains of sand spill down the barrel. It might bring back some memories.
What's that, Mr. Vice President? You didn't serve in Vietnam? Gosh, I just figured you being a guy who likes to pick up the gun and pull on those camouflage duds that you might have had some military experience at some point.
You know, like DeNiro and those guys in The Deer Hunter.
So what happened, Mr. Vice President? Did you have that Rush Limbaugh problem -- a little discomfort on the backside? Did you feel the draft and fall victim to that right-wing flu?
What's that, Mr. Vice President? You prefer to fight a war in a coat and tie?
Oh, that's a good one, Mr. Vice President. I'll bet that gets some giggles when you and the president get together.
But seriously, what did keep you out of that war? You didn't join the National Guard, did you?
Five deferments
You got deferments? You got five deferments? That sure is a lot of deferments for one person. It might be some kind of record. You sure must have had a lot of strange and horrible things going on in your life to get five deferments.
But there must be times, like this week for example, when you know all that dodging is going to come back at you.
You might even find yourself wishing that you'd lost out on that fifth deferment and actually had to answer the call. Heck, you might have developed some lasting skills and instincts that would have served you well when settling in with close friends and your security detail to pepper the Texas sky with birdshot.
Because now you have this hunting accident in Texas to deal with. You shot an elderly Republican instead of a bird. The poor guy has since suffered a heart attack. And you are woefully slow in getting the news out even though you are the vice president and people might want to know that you'd shot someone and personal responsibility seems to get mentioned a lot at the White House. So you find yourself in the middle of an endless Saturday Night Live skit -- a smoking shotgun in your hand and an older person lying on the ground next to you.
A hunting accident gets blown out of all proportion because you are who you are.
It will go on and on. That slobbering liberal media will point out far too gleefully that you did something in Texas that you never did in Vietnam:
You saw some real action with a gun in your hand.
Scripps Howard News Service