Along with fishing, hunting is big in Northern Michigan, both as a hobby and lifestyle and, increasingly in bad economic times, as a way to provide meat for one's family. Up in Cheboygan County, where my family has a summer cabin, gun shops and taxidermy studios are as common as rare-book stores and coffee shops are near my year-round home. It's just part of the culture. So when hunter Crystal Sherwood accidentally shot up a daycare center last November, inflicting minor wounds on two young children, the local reaction was, "accidents happen!"
According to the Cheboygan Daily Tribune, the Benton Township resident was firing at a deer when her bullets pierced the daycare. Sherwood now faces charges for discharging a firearm in or at a building, two
counts of careless discharge of a firearm and felony firearm. Free on bail, she has already surrendered her hunting rifle. If convicted, she could face up to six years' jail time.
Reading, online, the newspaper we all consume over coffee on chilly summer mornings up at the lake, it occurred to me how very different things are from here. I live outside Boston, where guns and hunting are seen as pretty low-rent and even bizarre, certainly as dangerous and even immoral. And obviously it's a horrible thing that children were injured, just as it's horrible when children in the city are injured in firearm violence or accidents. Yet the comments on the Tribune site point to a different, and maybe more reasonable, reaction from the citizens Up North. Repeatedly, they stress that this was an accident, that Sherwood has given up her gun, that her guilt over the incident is undoubtedly worse than any judicial punishment. Then they speak as taxpayers, wishing to avoid paying for someone they regard as "not a criminal" to spend time in jail at taxpayer expense. Then they speak as fellow hunters, suggesting she should take up fishing instead, or take a safety class, or be mandated to speak about the incident at local schools or sporting clubs.
Look, if one of my kids were hit by a stray bullet from any source whatsoever, I'd be thinking of murdering someone. But I'm fascinated at the responses of the northwoods crowd -- fair, measured, critical, sympathetic -- and it makes me wish sometimes that my tony Massachusetts suburb had a little more of what they have up there (including the venison).
More by this author:
They Say: More Abuse, Neglect Among Bottle-Feeding Moms
Does Obama's Election Mean Black Kids Now Have "No Excuses"?
Would You Toilet-Train Your Child On National TV?
Biracial Twins -- Is One "Black" and One "White"?
