Obama Loves Skeet Shooting? Not Likely!

-By Warner Todd Huston

Many received with raised eyebrow President Obama’s recent claim that he goes skeet shooting at Camp David “all the time.” But until Fox News’ Jana Winter looked into it, few in the media seemed much interested in trying to verify Obama’s startling claim. Maybe it’s because Obama’s claim is as absurd as it first seemed.

In a recent interview the President gave to the left-leaning New Republic, he tried to blow off as unfounded any criticism over his new anti-Second Amendment crusade. “Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” he assured the magazine.

As soon as Obama’s skeet shooting claim was revealed people have scoffed at the claim. The question becomes, how does one prove that Obama is not just spinning a tall tale here?

One way would be to discover photographic evidence to buttress the President’s claim. But the problem is there isn’t any.

The President is followed around night and day by a retinue of official photographers led by chief White House photographer Pete Souzza. Nearly every waking hour of the President’s life is captured inside the lens of Souzza and his team. So, if Obama does this “all the time” there should be many photos of a grinning Obama happily blowing away airborne clay discs at the famed presidential retreat.

If Obama had been at this little Camp David pastime so often, surely there would be a lot of photos showing it. But there aren’t any.

This made Jana Winter curious and so she went looking for any eyewitnesses that could corroborate Obama’s claim. Winter did find some people that admitted that Obama had once been skeet shooting at Camp David, but was told that the President couldn’t get away from it fast enough.

Winter’s eyewitness told her that, “The only time he shot skeet was for President’s Cup [a presidential Marine guards competition]. I was there. He stayed for about five minutes, and couldn’t leave fast enough.”

Winter went on to report that her source told her skeet shooting is “very hard. Especially for someone not used to guns.” Amusingly, the source also said the President “couldn’t have been more uncomfortable.”

But perhaps we all took Obama’s interview too expansively. Perhaps the President had given us a more Clintonian “it depends on what ‘is’ is” line.

After all, John Hayward pointed out that Obama didn’t exactly say he was the one doing the skeet shooting. As Hayward says, Obama could easily say he was only making the statement that skeet shooting was indulged by visitors to the presidential retreat. “We do skeet shooting all the time” could be parsed to mean a “we” that encompasses all those at Camp David, not necessarily just him. A sort of royal we, if you will.

One amusing aspect of this tale was when The New Republic pushed out a photo it claimed showed the President in the act enjoying some Camp David skeet shooting. The magazine was later embarrassed to discover it was a faked image and quickly deleted any reference to it.

Regardless, it all appears more like Obama perpetrated a blatant pander based on a very slim thread of truth with this skeet shooting tale.

**UPDATE Feb. 2, 2013**

The White House finally posted one photograph of Obama shooting a gun. The photo is a waist up shot of the president shooting an over and under (with a back drop of trees). Still, they finally posted a photo of him shooting a shotgun. The photo was uploaded Feb. 1, 2013, after, we might note, all the uproar. So, when this photo was shot is anyone’s guess though the caption says, “President Barack Obama shoots clay targets on the range at Camp David, Md., Saturday, Aug. 4, 2012. (Official White Photo by Pete Souza).” The photo is labeled as upload# “P080412PS-0464 by The White House.”

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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.

For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.


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