Despite the minor splash President Biden made in New York City last week with another of his error-filled, anti-gun rants, there isn’t a brand-new, major assault underway on the Second Amendment.

That sentence virtually guarantees an angry response from one (or more) of the many groups that use every dog-whistle political speech as an excuse to fire up their fundraising efforts. They’ll remind me that anti-2A politicians are always trying to put new regulations on legal gun ownership.

Unfortunately, that’s true, too.

Politicians never stop being politicians. Unfortunately, many of our own advocacy groups use their time-worn rhetoric the same way.

In the absence of evil there’s not much work for superheroes.

Like many of you, I’m tired of the hyperbole.

It’s not enough to say something is good or bad. It has to be cataclysmic. The apex of apexes. The pinnacle of human achievement or the embodiment of evil.

The problem is this: nothing lives up to that level of hype.

We live in a world where people, places and things seem to be elevated to stratospheric levels just so we can lust after them for a while; then enjoy a moment of schaienfrunde as they topple back to earth (tech stocks, anyone?).

As outdoors people, we should do a bit more reflecting on the seasons, tides and the revolving of the earth around the sun.

Everything is cyclic. There can’t be a magnificent sunrise without even a sunset, even a forgettable one, the evening prior.

Both sides in every argument exist in a symbiotic relationship. Absent one, there’s no need for the other. Or, as my grandmother told us while sorting out childhood disagreements, “truth is usually in the middle of both stories.”

Weigh things carefully. Try not to discount everything someone says simply because you disagree with them over one thing.

If their position is insufficient to change your opinion, make certain you’re able to explain why.

Don’t substitute passion for facts. Ultimately, facts matter.

If facts don’t convince them; disassociate. Don’t waste time arguing with the intransigent. Don’t be intransigent.

Don’t believe things can’t change for the better simply because it seems otherwise right now.

Cyclic, remember?

This weekend I read an article in the (gasp) New York Times that actually offered an accurate portrayal of one of the people whose name you regularly see in The Outdoor Wires: Stephen Rinella.

In describing Rinella’s business (the MeatEater “franchise”) the writer used Rinella’s own self-description (“Environmentalist with a gun”) to explain how he was “teaching a new kind of hunter how killing animals can be part of nature.”

I kept reading, waiting for what I felt would be an inevitable “gotcha” from a newspaper not known for its fair and balanced description of gun owners, anglers or hunters.

Instead, the piece accurately described Rinella, from his growing up a hunter/trapper/angler, but being totally “unaware” that uncontrolled hunting/fishing/trapping virtually wiped out many wild animals from the country to his realization that legislation (think the Lacey Act, Pittman-Robertson) protected them to his ability to explain hunting and fishing so that even the most anti-opponents of both could see the benefits of either-or both.

It explained for the unaware (which would cover most New York Times readers) why outdoorsmen were accurate when they say “hunting is conservation.”

It even quoted Tony Wasley, president of the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies and director of the Nevada Department of Wildlife, citing his email signature’s “Support Nevada’s Wildlife…Buy a Hunting and Fishing License."

It was quite the read.

From a first-person account of a hunting trip to the growing number of chefs advocating the harvesting and preparation of wild game, it was…wait on it…fair and balanced.

Interestingly, quotes from a couple of hunting and fishing organizations will likely stir more controversy inside the ranks of hunters and anglers than from anti-groups that won’t approve of positive characterization of hunters and anglers by the Times.

It isn’t proof that the Times is changing. But it is anecdotal proof that being able to clearly state the reasons behind your stance - as Rinella does whenever he talks about hunting, fishing or wild game - can convince a reporter who’s “trying to eat less meat, not more” that the “love of the natural world” makes a person “want to act to protect it.” It is, as she wrote, an “expansive common ground that needs to be filled with as many people as can be mustered..”

We should all be able to agree on that.

— Jim Shepherd