Cops Shut Down Fantagraphics Shoot-out Party
Police forces from the Snohomish County Sheriff's department and the Sultan Police department swarmed on the semi-annual Fantagraphics Shoot-out party on Saturday, shutting down the festivities after only a measly two hours of shooting, which wasn't nearly enough time to shoot all the tvs, computer monitors and lawn mowers hauled out to be shot (see our coverage of the 2005 party here). Apparently, according to these cops, it's somehow "illegal" to dump a lot of junk on some random unknown stranger's private property in the woods and shoot it with guns. Wow, really? Who knew?
No arrests were made, no tickets were given and no one got shot. Still, it's a drag that the lawn mower only got two or three bullets in it and some of those computer monitors are still relatively intact. Tragic, even. More details and tons of crappy cellphone camera photos with an ever present finger obscuring the images after the jump.
The day got off to an okay start. As if sensing we would be getting in to some kind of trouble that day, Jacob Covey had the foresight to tag the front of the company van with the relevant information to ensure maximum discretion should we have to make a getaway and not want to be identified or anything.
The weapons used included a 12 gauge shotgun, a 300 winmag rifle with a telescopic lens, a 45, a 44 magnum, a 357 magnum, a 10m and 9m. Also some bayonet knives in case any targets resisted the bullets or if we ran out of ammo.
The few targets that managed to get shot before the party-pooping cops came out to enforce the precious liberal "laws" included some tv sets with glass so thick they should have been bullet proof, and a bottle of massage lotion that Gary said needed to be shot because it had an "inappropriate viscosity," whatever the fuck that means. Anyway, he shot it with vehemence and it exploded.
When the cops showed up, they cordoned off the forest service road with their cars...
...and got out with their hands on their guns (still holstered) and ordered everybody to get in front of the van and keep their hands up. Gary was furthest away and couldn't hear what they were saying, so for some inexplicable reason his hand seemed to go for the gun in his holster. The cops didn't seem to like that and started yelling. He put his hands up and one of the cops came over and took the gun away from him. After the cops were talking to us for a while about how what we were doing wasn't exactly legal (technically) and how we were on private property, blah blah blah, we all eventually lowered our hands, except for one of us who will remain nameless. The cop noticed and paused in his speech to tell her, "Maam, it's okay to put your hands down now." Everyone enjoyed a hearty Ha ha.
When the cops asked if we had hauled all the junk targets out ourselves or if we just found them there, there was a momentary temptation to lie and say we just found them there. But then why do we have this ridiculously humongous van in the middle of the woods? Cops don't like being lied to so we cooperated.
All things considered these cops were really cool. They could have thrown the book at us and sent us off to Guantanamo but they didn't and for that they can have lifetime subscriptions to The Comics Journal if they want, plus some free ads if we're not sold out at press time.
As mentioned earlier, all these cell phone camera shots suck. Jacob took pictures with a real camera and will hopefully post them to the FLOG at some point between now and when we all die of old age. Just put the FLOG in your RSS feed and maybe something will show up.
So now the only question remaining is: Where will Fantagraphics hold the semi-annual shoot-out parties in the future since it's evidently not cool to just do it on random spots found in the woods? Is there anybody out there reading this who owns land with cool neighbors who won't call the cops? We still have a tv to shoot. Seattlest and Fantagraphics beseech you...
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