Palin Speaks at Gun Owners Conference
The Daily Beast reports:
It's 8:00 on Saturday night in Reno, and 2,500 of the most avid members of Safari Club International—the sort of hunters who target lions instead of, say, ducks--are packed into the Tuscany Ballroom at the Peppermill Hotel and Casino, poking at their Chocolate Hazelnut Bombe with Frangelico Cream. Some are dressed in tuxedos; others are sporting ankle-length hides and Flintstone-style fang necklaces. In the world's largest and most active big-game hunting organization, "semi-formal" seems to have many meanings. The assembled masses have reached that special part of the evening when the filet mignon is finished, the awards have been awarded, and the green and blue laser beams that periodically shoot from the stage are no longer as dazzling as they were two hours ago. They are, put simply, getting bored.
But now, finally, is the moment most of them have been waiting for since Wednesday morning, when SCI's 39th annual convention began. As President Larry Rudolph finishes introducing his keynote speaker--a figure he describes as "truly one of us"--the crowd doesn't wait to hear her name before leaping to its feet. They know it fairly well already: former Alaska governor, former Republican vice-presidential candidate, and once and future huntress of caribou and clubber of halibut... the one and onlySarah Palin.
Palin is all smiles as she strides on stage. The press has been barred from tonight's event, and she knows she won't find a crowd this friendly again anytime soon--especially in a key presidential caucus state. The audience is even happier. For the past few days, powerless rank-and-file Safari Clubbers have been fretting over what the government plans to do with their guns after January 8's tragic shooting in Tucson. Now they're about to hear from someone who may potentially have the pull to prevent their worst nightmares from coming true. The roar of the crowd is positively leonine.
Warm welcome or not, it still takes a few minutes for Palin to hit her target. At first, she seems to address every topic except the aftermath of Tucson. She admits that she "threw a little politics" into her recent TLC reality show by dragging the crew to the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge on the pretense of hunting caribou. Her real purpose? Showing viewers that ANWR is a "barren, desolate, less-than-pristine place"--perfect, in other words, for lots of new oil drilling. "If a caribou needs to be sacrificed for the sake of energy independence," she adds, "I say, 'Mr. Caribou, maybe you need to take one for the team.'" She mentions how some media figures have pledged not cover her at all in February, and says the boycott "sounds good" to her: "because there's a lot of chaos in Cairo, and I can't wait to not get blamed for it--at least for a month." She even cites her children's Christian names as evidence of her outdoorswoman cred. "Piper was named after Todd's airplane, the Piper cub, which gets us to the hunting grounds," she explains. "Bristol, Bristol Bay fishing grounds. Willow, a local sport-fishing stream. Trig, I pull the TRIG-ger. Track... I remember when we told my dad that his grandson was named Track, he said, 'Like TRACKing an elephant?'"
But in the middle of a story about her daughter's stint on Dancing with the Stars, Palin is suddenly reminded of the pachyderm in the room—"this recent talk coming from the White House," as she puts it, "about President Obama's attempts to perhaps infringe further upon our Second Amendment rights." Somewhere, a man boos, and a few others follow his lead. Palin nods in agreement. "We need to keep tabs on what the White House is telling us," she continues. "Just think if we had even stricter gun control laws!" As the crowd hoots and hollers, a grin slowly spreads across Palin's face. It's the look she gets when she knows she's on a roll. "Imagine, though—imagine making life even more miserable for the liberals who want that gun control," she finally says. "Here's how I figure it. Remember that weird guy in Wisconsin was so angry, so upset, watching a Palin win slot after slot each week on Dancing with the Stars that he shot Bristol through his TV? He blasted his Panasonic? Well, I'm thinking, 'Imagine more gun control. Then he'd have to attack his Panasonic with a butter knife.'"
