Civil War re-enactor’s shooting shakes die-hards

Associated Press – October 25, 2008 12:25 PM ET

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – The tight-knit community of Civil War re-enactors was shaken by last month’s shooting of 1 of its participants in southeastern Virginia.

Retired New York City police officer Thomas Lord was portraying a Union soldier for a documentary being filmed in a Suffolk park when he was shot in the shoulder.

Ed Hooper is editor of Camp Chase Gazette, a monthly magazine for re-enactors. He says re-enactors were “freaked out” because incidents like this are rare, and when they happen they hit the hobby hard.

Investigators believe they know who fired the shot. Members of Lord’s union say the suspected shooter was among several Confederate re-enactors who showed up at the filming. No charges have been filed.

Hooper says the shooting will amplify re-enactors’ emphasis on safety.

I will say that generally those concerned with authenticity and accuracy tend to be the best in regard to smothering the cliques and ensuring safety. The last three events I attended were with a “campaigner” outfit. Good guys but they were being pushed out by the rabble.

I reenacted for 10 years. 99.9 percent of the things I saw were safety oriented. that .1 percent can be deadly, however, and I became aware of things I was not comfortable with.

I no longer reenact, not so much for safety issues as for the simple reason that I was going to events next to battlefields but never actually spending time on the fields. A case of confused priorities, as it were.

I firmly believe that weapons used for live shooting of any kind should never also be taken to a reenactment. I also believe that the re-enactment community has been lucky, overall, that more injuries have not occurred – it’s too easy to forget you are “playing’ with real weapons.

That said, I enjoyed my time at events, including some big ones – Gettysburg 83, for example. Sorry to hear about this mistake, but I really do believe it was a mistake.

Dave Powell

In the same way, when I raised roses, a very respected and well known rose grower put a new insecticide at the time (Orthene) into an iced tea glass and accidentally drank it! How he could have done this when the stuff stank to high heaven, I don’t know. But immediately the “nanny staters” wanted to outlaw pesticides in general and Orthene in particular – when the episode was the fault of the man who stupidly put a poison in a drinking glass and then more stupidly drank it!

Unless the fellow who fired the bullet had mental problems, I would assume it was just another example of stupidity. Unfortunately, if we are going to imprison all the stupid people in this country or all the folks who act stupidly, well …. Neither can we legislate safety – we’ve tried it and all that it leads to is greater interference in our lives by the government – certainly not something who has any respect for personal liberty should wish.

My dad was nearly speared by a fired ramrod at South Mountain in 1987….and ramrods were supposed to have been removed from rifles for that 125th event.