I just love it when the drive-by media fires a shot at a conservative and winds up shooting itself in the foot. Such is the case with CNN's latest attempted smear of Fred Thompson:

Fred Thompson has made a point of visiting gun shops and gun shows while hitting the campaign trail in New Hampshire and South Carolina, usually with camera crews in tow.

But Thompson said Wednesday he does not have a hunting license, nor has be been hunting recently.

"It's been too long, it's been too long," Thompson told CNN Wednesday.

Asked if he has a hunting license, Thompson said he currently does not.

Leave it to the Clinton News Network to have the point of the Second Amendment soar over its head. The network's South Carolina producer Peter Hamby, who authored the hit piece, has not the first clue.

The Second Amendment is not about hunting. It is about the right of American citizens to arm themselves against tyranny. The founders saw the most likely potential source of that tyranny to be the federal government. Their experience with His Majesty King George's government had made them wary of what even the government they were laboring to establish could possibly become at some point in the future. So our founding fathers had the foresight to build in some safeguards against that worst-case scenario. They wrote an American Constitution which only delegated certain limited powers to the federal government and reserved all others to the people and to the states. Knowing that one of the first acts of an oppresive regime is to disarm its citizens to prevent them from resisting, the founders went one step further and explicitly guaranteed the people the right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment to that Constitution.

Fred Thompson and nearly 100 million American gun owners understand this. CNN and the collectivist Left do not.

A salute to Warner Todd Huston for being the first to take Hamby and CNN to task for their miserably failed attempt at pulling a "gotcha" on Thompson with this post on NewsBusters:

CNN has posted a Political Ticker entry trying to create a "gotcha" on 2nd Amendment supporter, Fred Thompson. CNN's South Carolina Producer Peter Hamby has breathlessly announced that "Thompson does not have hunting license," but the question is... so what? Do you HAVE to own a hunting license to be for the 2nd Amendment? Does Fred not owning a hunting license disqualify him as a gun rights advocate? Well, it appears that CNN imagines that you are illegitimate if you claim to support the 2nd Amendment yet you don't have a valid hunting license. What we end up with here is proof that CNN doesn't have a clue what it means to own a gun, what it means to support gun rights, nor do they understand the 2nd Amendment itself, or that there are various "gun cultures" and levels of interest and usage for guns in the United States.

Huston lists several aspects of the gun culture and drives home the point that they don't necessarily involve the hunting of wild game:

Now, anyone interested in the Constitution, history, guns as a hobby, guns as historical artifacts, target shooting, Civil War and Revolutionary War reenacting, or Cowboy shooting will know right away that CNN's gotcha is a meaningless point to flog. All those interested in the gun hobbies and causes mentioned above have no necessary connection to hunting whatsoever. Folks who like target shooting, reenacting or history might also be hunters, but many are not. Yet they are ALL for 2nd Amendment rights, hunting or no.

Add to that list the most important reasons to own guns: protecting one's self, liberty, loved ones and property from all those who would harbor nefarious designs on them.

If there's anyone out there who still doubts CNN's liberal agenda and determination to cast a negative light on true conservatives at any opportunity, this attempted smear job targeting Fred Thompson should put such doubts to rest.

- JP