9 Year Old Accidently Kills Gun Instructor

[Gravekeeper]

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/ne...ally-shot-girl

I don't even know where to start. This reads like satire. Bullets and Burgers? Handing a random 9 year old girl an UZI on full auto? And now this little girl has to live with the guilt of this as a result of someone else's stupidity.

[the_std]

Today I learned that there is no minimum age requirement on using a gun at a shooting range.

On driving a car, smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol and voting, there is. But not on firing a potentially deadly weapon with little training.

I don't get it. I straight up do not understand.

[Greenday]

You can't fire a weapon unsupervised when you are 9. A 9 year old can't just walk in and start firing away.

I don't have a problem with letting a 9 year old fire a gun. Really, an Uzi on single fire doesn't have much kick at all and a 9 year old could handle it. But full auto is vastly different from single fire. It was an extremely pour decision to let her fire it full auto and the dumb instructor paid for it with his life.

[Gravekeeper]

Today I learned that there is no minimum age requirement on using a gun at a shooting range.

There is. In some states. Only on fully automatic weapons. But this isn't one of them. A similar thing happened a few years ago with an 8 year old and an UZI. But that one was more tragic and the parent's involved even more profoundly stupid.

[Rageaholic]

Today I learned that there is no minimum age requirement on using a gun at a shooting range.

On driving a car, smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol and voting, there is. But not on firing a potentially deadly weapon with little training.

I don't get it. I straight up do not understand.

And gambling. God forbid little Johnny walks through a casino, but shooting a gun (even if it is supervised), that's cool.

[siead_lietrathua]

what i don't get is why kids need to be handling things like uzis
they're kids. give 'em a freakin nerf gun, squirt gun, let them go to town.
hell, paintball or airsoft even (supervised of course)

but IMHO it's a special kinda stupid to hand a kid a gun even supervised. accidents can happen. limit the risk. common fucking sense.

and i don't wanna hear crap about how kids should be able to learn how to shoot guns means they need to use real ones. they can learn how to aim and stuff with paintball/etc.

[AccountingDrone]

<shrug> I learned to shoot long arms on a garand [which is currently sitting in my closet] when I was 8 years old at the boy sprout camp in Pike NY. My dad was running the rifle range on weekends after he retired from the army. I also learned to shoot a revolver and a semi-auto hand gun [my ruger service 6 and my sauer 38h, which I also still have.]

Did he just hand them over? No - I got the full safety training that every other boy sprout got, which was digested from the army rangemaster course. I also learned how to clean and inspect the items for safety as well.

Should she have been handed an uzi? IMHO no - I started with the ruger, then the sauer *then* the garand. I would start a kid with a revolver, then workup to an uzi. Did she get the NRA safety course first, or did he just hand her a gun?

[Gravekeeper]

There is video now. It does not show the fatal shot ( thankfully. But not for the faint of heart just the same. ) but it does go up to the moment right before it. Not only does the instructor not help her brace for the recoil, he switches it to full auto after letting her take one shot single and has his head leaning over it the entire time.

[SkullKing]

You can't fire a weapon unsupervised when you are 9. A 9 year old can't just walk in and start firing away.

I don't have a problem with letting a 9 year old fire a gun. Really, an Uzi on single fire doesn't have much kick at all and a 9 year old could handle it. But full auto is vastly different from single fire. It was an extremely pour decision to let her fire it full auto and the dumb instructor paid for it with his life.

I agree with Green day, I don´t see anything inherently wrong with letting kids shoot guns when supervised by a responsible adult with the proper training(not only on guns, but also on teaching to children).

I think it is good they see a real one up close and understand how they really work, specially since they are so commonly seen in media.

The instructor was an idiot for letting her fire in full auto. Especially since it is not the first time something like this happens:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27399337/n.../#.U_3GI_ldW6M

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.s...ease_name.html

I was actually relieved that she killed the instructor and not herself.

[Gravekeeper]

Yes, that's the one I mentioned before.

I think if you live in a rural area or otherwise grow up in a family that hunts, farms, etc then sure. You're going to encounter long guns so you'd best know how to be safe around them.

I fail to see any purpose whatsoever in showing a child how to use something full auto though. Machine guns were not designed with children in mind. Nor are pistols in general. If you want to target shoot, a low caliber long gun works just fine. I learned on a .22 caliber rifle myself and that was strictly for target shooting and that was only when we lived in a more rural area where being dragged off in the night by a coyote was a legitimate possibility. >.>

[NecCat]

but IMHO it's a special kinda stupid to hand a kid a gun even supervised. accidents can happen. limit the risk. common fucking sense.

and i don't wanna hear crap about how kids should be able to learn how to shoot guns means they need to use real ones. they can learn how to aim and stuff with paintball/etc.

Like we shouldn't let kids use stoves and knives, even supervised? They cal learn kitchen skills from an easy bake oven right?

Limit the risk. Common fucking sense. If there's even a chance my child could grow up and ever touch a gun (hint, it's a sure bet that he will, even if my were gone and I never hunting again) he's going to a gun range, he's going often, he's going young, and he's going to learn proper safety, care and control of a gun before he gets out into the world without me looking over his shoulder.

Teaching him to aim with a paintball gun is particularly counter productive, they are deigned to be aimed and fired at people who you don't want to die.

I agree with the OP though, there is no reason to hand an automatic weapon to a 9yo. I hope she grows up with people telling her it's entirely that instructors stupidity he died.

[Ginger Tea]

I can see Siead's paint ball gun analogy and do not liken it to easy bake ovens.

they could make paint ball markers that weigh the same as a real gun instead of those that kinda look like the real deal, honestly those scare me, you know a paint ball gun is a paintball gun when it looks outlandish and has a hopper on it, those that try for the colt 45 look ...

or some other method that simulates the knock back with a safe bullet to see how well you aim, target practice should be more about accuracy than if the projectile is lethal or not.

Weighs the same, acts the same, reloads the same, but never once gets mistaken for a gun or seen to act as a toy.

As others have said, they have grown up around guns living in the sticks or where hunting is a form of food supply and not just sport, I really doubt any of their parents or extended family ever hand over a rifle whilst sippin moonshine or your closest stereotype, it's all about education.

Educate the shit out of them before you even think of handing them a real gun to fire, give them a replica to maintain for a week or more, see how they act with it, if the kid points it at someone and goes pew pew, then that kid isn't old enough mentally, to be given one with live ammo.

[siead_lietrathua]

Like we shouldn't let kids use stoves and knives, even supervised? They cal learn kitchen skills from an easy bake oven right?

not equivalent at all, and total overreaction to what i said.
a stove may burn you, but it's not going to launch hot soup into your face at high speed if you accidentally turn on the wrong burner. plus, you don't just hand the kid a frying pan, shove a stool to the stove, and say 'go to town'. they tend to learn the non-stove elements of cooking first, then 'graduate' to getting to use the stove.
a knife can cut you, even badly. but it's not going to fly from your hand and potentially kill someone 10+ feet away if you set it down on the table too rough.
you might as well have said "well maybe we shouldn't let kids use hammers!" there's a difference between letting a kid learn to use a tool that may injure them if used wrong, VS letting them handle a device that's designed for the sole purpose of killing.

really, what's the problem with waiting till they're a teenager before letting them fire guns! there's a world if difference between a kid that's 9, and a kid that's 12-13 when it comes to ability to both mentally and physically handle firing a weapon. if the girl in the video was a bit older, a bit stronger, she may have at least been able to contain the kick better. the teacher might have gotten off with a bullet to the arm, not the head.

and i don't see how teaching a person to aim with a paintball gun is any more dangerous then having them aim at a scoreboard with a real gun.
the kid that can actually aim with a paintball gun is less likely to shoot someone by accident than the kid taught on the range that can't aim for shit.
and via versa. the kid that can't shoot paintballs for shit is less likely to be able to intentionally kill someone than the range ace.

let's get one thing straight. i don't think kids are stupid. i just think the weapon is too dangerous. if IMHO i don't think a 9 year old should be driving a car, then why the hell would i think they should be firing a gun. wheras if i would trust a 13 year old to drive a car supervised, then they can probably also be trusted with the responsibility of supervised firearm use.

oh, sidenote: i'm a farm kid too. our dad taught us how guns work without us ever laying a finger on them until we were teenagers, and he gave us the choice as to whether or not we wanted to use them, didn't force us to fire them on the off chance we might be interested in it as adults.

[the_std]

let's get one thing straight. i don't think kids are stupid. i just think the weapon is too dangerous. if IMHO i don't think a 9 year old should be driving a car, then why the hell would i think they should be firing a gun. wheras if i would trust a 13 year old to drive a car supervised, then they can probably also be trusted with the responsibility of supervised firearm use.

oh, sidenote: i'm a farm kid too. our dad taught us how guns work without us ever laying a finger on them until we were teenagers, and he gave us the choice as to whether or not we wanted to use them, didn't force us to fire them on the off chance we might be interested in it as adults.

A-freaking-men. You said it way better than I could. I, like Gravekeeper, am a Canadian who grew up in rural life. I've used shotguns ever since my 13th birthday. It's not a "oooo guns are bad and scary", it's a level of responsibility with a DEADLY WEAPON. Seriously.

[siead_lietrathua]

I, like Gravekeeper, am a Canadian who grew up in rural life.

woo, canada hi-5!

maybe that's part of why i don't get it. is it a cultural gap between us northlanders and the downstairs neighbours to let kids use firearms?