The Rifle Man

In regard to Michael Walker’s piece on novelist Jim Harrison (“When the Wolf Howls,” June 12):

It is both hilarious and frankly not a little frightening, in this locus of anti-gun hysteria, that The Times would edit a quote from this fine writer thusly: “By which time I was ready to take out my .270 (shotgun) and blow them away.”

“Two-seventy” refers to the .270 Winchester cartridge, a necked-down version of the venerable 30-06 that has long remained the standard American deer rifle. It is not a shotgun. Shotguns shoot shot, not bullets, and are in fact called shotguns for that very reason. To describe a .270 as a shotgun is as informed as to describe a refrigerator as having four burners and an oven.

Your corrective error at another point in our political history would have simply been a source of amusement among knowledgeable people. Unfortunately, with a majority of the media now constantly propagandizing voters with inappropriate and often downright misleading firearms terms, it represents another prideful and arrogant step toward the certainty that universities and newspapers teach the truth and real life does not.

PATRIC McMENAMIN

Woodland Hills