Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Heard on the Hill: King’s Parting Shot

UPDATE on the Story from Iowa's WHOTV.com

We were just sent the following update. We had a hunch that PETA was not going to be happy and sure enough they want a racoon put ahead of the safety of Rep King's grandchildren. Personally we will come down on the side of Steve King not PETA. Once again PETA was an animal put ahead of people.

Iowa Congressman Steve King, gunslinger. The raccoon never knew what hit it. Apparently, the raccoon was trying to push its way into the King family home in Kiron. Kiron pulled out his trusty Desert Eagle. The coon didn't stand a chance. Here's the story.

PETA isn't a fan of the story. Here's a followup story on Roll Call:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has weighed in on Rep. Steve King (R) killing a raccoon that tried to crawl its way into his Iowa home — and not surprisingly, the animal welfare group isn’t too pleased.

PETA spokesman Jaime Zalac tells HOH that King should pick on someone his own size, “not a small animal seeking warmth in a blizzard.”

“It doesn’t give you comfort in your representatives when a member of Congress finds it amusing to boast of shooting a desperately cold animal who is 100 times smaller than he is and whose only misstep was trying to get into a large, warm house,” Zalac said in a written statement. “I hope he’s not on any committees that make decisions regarding cruel and unusual punishment. Decent people would call animal control for help, not get on Twitter to boast about having a really, really big gun.”

King tweeted on Feb. 9 that he killed the raccoon with a Desert Eagle pistol when he spotted it crawling into his house. In an interview last week, King told HOH that he felt he needed to kill the critter because he believed it was rabid and could potentially hurt his family.

And King insisted he appreciates wildlife, noting he often sees deer, rabbits, squirrels and other animals on his property.
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Great job Cong Steve King (R-IA) who understands there are times that the safety of people come before a racoon. By today's standards of PETA that automatically makes him a Conservative Republican!

Heard on the Hill: King’s Parting Shot
Feb. 16, 2010
By Emily Heil and Elizabeth Brotherton
Roll Call Staff

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Note to all raccoons out there: Don’t try to crawl your way into Rep. Steve King’s house. He’ll mess you up.
The Iowa Republican set the Twittersphere all aflutter last week after he posted this message: “Mid day, mid blizzard, 15 degrees, Crazy Raccoon chewing and clawing his way into my house. Desert Eagle 1, Crazy Raccoon zero.”

And because a story that involves a potentially crazed critter, a Congressman and a high-powered semiautomatic pistol can’t quite be summed up in 140 characters, HOH chatted with King on Friday to get the full story behind the now-infamous shooting.

King told HOH that the saga began when his wife, Marilyn, first saw the raccoon — which King described as younger and midsized — trying to crawl its way into the couple’s Iowa home. King was concerned the animal might be rabid, he said, because he had never seen a raccoon so close to the house in the winter.

But the raccoon disappeared until Feb. 9, when King, sitting in his family room on a conference call, spotted it again trying to weasel its way into the house. And he immediately sprung into action.

King grabbed the Desert Eagle — “It’s the one I had handy,” he told HOH — and went after the raccoon, which fled. But King caught up, fired and killed the creature.

“We can’t have an animal that might be sick, might be rabid, out there,” King said, adding that his granddaughters often play in the area where he spotted the raccoon. “That’s just what has to happen when you live out here in the country.”

But King insists he isn’t an animal hater, pointing out that his family often spots animals such as deer, squirrels and rabbits frolicking on their property. “We appreciate the wildlife,” King said.

But “I can’t have a crazy ’coon,” he added.

Source:

SOURCE:
Roll Call

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