Photograph by Pete Souza/The White House

President Barack Obama shoots clay targets with a shotgun on the range on Aug. 4, 2012 at Camp David, Maryland.

The proof is in the picture.

After President Barack Obama allowed in a recent interview that he and friends shoot skeet “all the time” up at Camp David, cynics started to question why there are no photos of the clay-clobbering president at camp — Presidents from Dwight Eisenhower, who opened the skeet range at the camp named for his grandson, to John F. Kennedy and George H.W. Bush have been pictured plugging away at flying clay at the mountain retreat.

The White House today released a photograph of Obama skeet shooting at Camp David last August after some Republicans expressed doubts that the Democratic president had actually engaged in the activity revealed in that New Republic interview.

“Pull!” — the shotgun is smoking in this presidential photo by White House Photographer Pete Souza.

Obama, who is seeking a ban on assault weapons and other measures to reduce gun violence, told the magazine in its Feb. 11 issue that he shoots skeet “all the time” at Camp David and respects the nation’s hunting tradition. He was responding to a question about whether he had ever fired a gun.

The photo, sent to reporters via Twitter by White House spokesman Jay Carney and Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer, shows Obama shooting clay targets on a range at Camp David Aug. 4.

Asked earlier this week about a photo of the president skeet shooting, Carney replied that when Obama “goes to Camp David, he goes to spend time with his family and friends and relax, not to produce photographs.”

Thereafter, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, expressed doubt about the president’s skeet shooting.

“You know, if you don’t have the photos, if this is not something that’s a new hobby, then I think he should invite me out to Camp David and I’ll challenge him,” Blackburn said on CNN. Asked for a reaction to Blackburn’s challenge, Carney responded, “I have none.”

The president will continue his pressure on Congress to curb gun violence when he speaks Monday at the Minneapolis Police Department’s Special Operations Center.  Obama has responded to the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting deaths of 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, with proposals to mandate background checks for all gun buyers, a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips and reinstatement of a ban on the sale of assault weapons.

With the photo in, we’re still waiting for the video, like this one of JFK and Jackie Kennedy learning to shoot skeet.

Original post is Obama Skeet-Shooting: Picture-Proof — JFK-Styled Video Next? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chris M. Rogers/Getty Images

Skeet shooting

A question came up at the White House today:

Just how much skeet shooting does President Barack Obama do at Camp David?

He said in an interview with The New Republic released over the weekend that he and friends go shooting “all the time” on the range that President Dwight Eisenhower opened at the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains named for his grandson David.

There are pictures of John F. Kennedy shooting skeet there, pictures of George H.W. Bush and his young, at the time, son Jeb shooting skeet there.

But the Camp David Web-site offers no photo album of the 44th president’s riflery (make that shotgunry).

“I don’t know how often,” the president shoots skeet at the mountain retreat, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today in response to a reporter’s question at the West Wing press briefing.  “He does go to Camp David with some regularity, but I’m not sure how often he’s done that.”

If there’s a photo of the president shooting skeet, Carney said, he hasn’t seen it.

Asked why this hasn’t been mentioned before — the president revealed it when asked in the TNR interview if he’d ever shot a gun, at this time when Obama is promoting a plan to curb gun violence — Carney explained: “Because when he goes to Camp David, he goes to spend time with his family and friends and relax, not to produce photographs.”

There is, however, video of the Kennedys at the Skeet Range — they liked to relax, and produced a lot of photographs, too.

Original post is More on Obama’s Skeet-Shooting: Camp David for Fun, Not Photos by Political Capital.

Camp David

President John F. Kennedy shot skeet at Camp David, shown here with David Niven and The Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee in 1963. Camp David Photo.President John F. Kennedy shot skeet at Camp David, shown here with David Niven and The Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee in 1963.

President Barack Obama, seeking a ban on assault weapons, says he shoots skeet “all the time” at Camp David.

Obama told The New Republic magazine in an interview that at the presidential retreat in Maryland’s wooded Catoctin Mountains “we do skeet shooting all the time.”

“Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there” to shoot skeet, Obama added in an interview published in the magazine’s Feb. 11 issue.

President Dwight Eisenhower, who had the good sense to rename the presidential retreat for grandson David — it had been known as Shangri-La before then — installed the skeet shooting range in the 1950s.

Obama, father of two daughters, mentioned his interest in skeet shooting in response to a question on whether he had ever fired a gun.

Obama has responded to a shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school last month by proposing legislation to mandate background checks for all gun buyers, ban high-capacity ammunition clips and reinstate a ban on sales of assault weapons. Obama also signed 23 executive actions aimed at circumventing congressional opposition to new gun restrictions, including several designed to maximize prosecution of gun crimes and improve access to government data for background checks.

Twenty students and six educators were killed in a mass shooting Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Skeet shooting involves shotguns, not Bushmasters. And there are no mega-clips involved.

The president also expressed concern about violence and injuries in professional and intercollegiate football in this interview, saying he would “think long and hard” if he had a son before allowing him to play. Obama, an avowed sports fan, says the National Collegiate Athletic Association in particular should consider rules changes in view of emerging evidence on long-term health consequences of head blows suffered by players.

He said he is “more worried” about amateur college players than professional National Football League players who are “grown men” represented by a union and paid a salary.

“You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on,” Obama said in the interview. “That’s something that I’d like to see the NCAA think about.”

Obama predicted that football rules will “probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence.” He said the while rules changes to tamp down violence “may make it a little bit less exciting,” the result “will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won’t have to examine our consciences quite as much.”

Original post is Obama Shoots Skeet at Camp David — and Has Advice for the NCAA by Political Capital.

Need a new approach to raising campaign cash? Forget about the grueling grip-and-grins, the endless cocktail receptions and rubber-chicken dinners. You can follow one sportman’s approach that’s gaining popularity.

Representative Bill Huizenga (R-MI) is taking his donors skeet shooting. He just held a “Trap & Skeet Shoot” fundraiser in July in Maryland. “It’s definitely not the cocktail scene,” Huizenga said. “It’s a different atmosphere, obviously a little smaller and a little more casual.” Candidates get to some backwoods bonding and raise some serious cash. Tickets for the event started at $250 and ran as high as $2,000.

Others are hunting skeet for cash, too. Rep. Steve Fincher (R-TN) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) have also held summer skeet and trap events at the Prince George’s County Trap & Skeet Center — just 20 miles from the halls of Congress. Rhys Arthur who is the Chief Instructor at the facility said skeet shooting “is the newest, coolest, in-thing to do. Everybody wants to do this.”

Original post is Raising Campaign Cash, Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel by Political Capital.