# 8-year-old boy kills himself with AK-47 **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 27, 2008, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838 "2008-10-27T20:31:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/61 "2008-10-28T02:12:37Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > We only have one 2nd amendment. We have lots of 8 year olds. It is no big thing. He could have been hit by a car . He could have died lots of ways. You can not blame guns. All 8 year olds have responsible and intelligent adult parents. He could have stabbed himself with a knife or a carrot. We only have one 4th amendment too. I’m not willing to sacrifice the protections it gives me because a child killer is released to kill again as a result of an illegal search. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/62 "2008-10-28T02:56:22Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > This will represent my only other contribution to this thread. I’ve been waiting for some fuckwit to offer up this completely asinine and fuckwitted argument (although I commend him for the creativity of substituting snake ownership in place of buckets). > > Figuring out the relative risk of guns versus bicycles or electricity (!) involves determining the number of times each is used with and without death occurring. The number of times bicycles and electricity are used without death occuring relative to when they are used is going to vastly outweigh the number of times firearms are used without death occuring. > > This is like those retards who were making the argument that more deaths were occuring in California than in Iraq, so it was safer in Iraq! > > Please make reasoned arguments without resorting to outright stupidity. What statistics involving the number of children accidentally killed/number of guns owned(bullets fired?) versus, say number of children injured or killed/number of bicycles (riding events) would you like to cite? You may be so personally frightened by guns that you think they should all be locked up and taken away or something, but you are still missing the point: it wasn’t the gun here–it was the morons. At issue is not whether guns are dangerous–they are–but whether gun “accidents” (particularly by morons) are a reason for gun control. There may be arguments for gun control, but this child’s death is not one of them. It’s so grossly inappropriate to have an 8 year-old shooting an automatic weapon that it has no bearing on gun control in general. Like arguing you should control the use of bicycles because some baby was put on one and pushed down the driveway into the path of a truck. And what, exactly, do you gain by insulting me simply because this is the Pit? Idiot. Barbaric, even. By way of comparison: 5 million households have swimming pools; 500 children/year drown in residential drownings. 40 million households have guns; 250 children (of morons with guns, and often drunk and stupid morons with guns, and often drunk and stupid morons with unregistered guns) die each year in gun accidents. Have ya had a chance to vent your rage against THE POOL? Try and get both neurons working before you post again. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/63 "2008-10-28T03:20:06Z")
> [@catsix](#): > > Sorry to be a pedantic asshole, but there’s a bigger difference between submachine gun and machine gun than 3 letters. > > An Uzi is the latter. If you want to get pedantic and go by the definition of “machine gun” as it is understood in the English language and cited in every decent dictionary, an Uzi is in fact a machine gun. It’s also a submachine gun. A submachine gun is a category of machine gun. It is a subset, not a completely separate set, just as one’s dog might be a schnauzer, but it’s still also a dog. Literally, any weapon that can continuously fire rounds is a machine gun. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/64 "2008-10-28T03:24:38Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > What statistics involving the number of children accidentally killed/number of guns owned(bullets fired?) versus, say number of children injured or killed/number of bicycles (riding events) would you like to cite? Whatever you’ve got (but you’ll have to do better than your moronic effort below. > [@](#): > > You may be so personally frightened by guns that you think they should all be locked up and taken away or something, but you are still missing the point: it wasn’t the gun here–it was the morons. At issue is not whether guns are dangerous–they are–but whether gun “accidents” (particularly by morons) are a reason for gun control. There may be arguments for gun control, but this child’s death is not one of them. It’s so grossly inappropriate to have an 8 year-old shooting an automatic weapon that it has no bearing on gun control in general. Like arguing you should control the use of bicycles because some baby was put on one and pushed down the driveway into the path of a truck. I think I said exactly that in my first post, fuckwit. > [@](#): > > And what, exactly, do you gain by insulting me simply because this is the Pit? Idiot. Barbaric, even. I get the pleasure of taking advantage of the opportunity to call you a fuckwit. I think every post I’ve seen of yours has been fuckwitted, but often they are fuckwitted posts about global warming or Al Gore in GD. It was a nice chance to cover all of those posts by calling you for what you are. > [@](#): > > By way of comparison: 5 million households have swimming pools; 500 children/year drown in residential drownings. 40 million households have guns; 250 children (of morons with guns, and often drunk and stupid morons with guns, and often drunk and stupid morons with unregistered guns) die each year in gun accidents. Have ya had a chance to vent your rage against THE POOL? How many times do people use a pool each year? How many times do people use a gun each year? Man you are Captain I-Don’t-Get-It. > [@](#): > > Try and get both neurons working before you post again. That’s just fucking lame. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/65 "2008-10-28T03:35:11Z")
It is important to note that the weapon that killed this boy was not an [Uzi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Uzi_1.jpg), but a [Mini-Uzi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Uzi_2.jpg). The mini-uzi is a much smaller version of the fairly standard sized Uzi SMG. And which, for all practical purposes, is a Machine Pistol. I think the chances of this particular mishap would have been much reduced and less likely had the boy been firing an actual Uzi. This accident was due to the subcompact nature and physics of the mini-uzi. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/66 "2008-10-28T04:12:30Z")
It’s a horrible tragedy and I am not going to drag my politics into this but would instead like to point out the fact that the gun expert adults and supervisors here might have been under a false physical impression that the small size of this gun was the “perfect” size for a youngster. I think it was bad reckoning of mass, physics, and not taking into account that though it is a smaller gun it still packs the same load in velocity of its well engineered and balanced progenitor… not to lessen the entire lack of judgement in allowing an 8 year old to fire it in the firstplace. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/67 "2008-10-28T04:12:39Z")
By the way, just to clear up one point. Despite Chief Douchebag’s lame stab, I am not afraid of guns. As I’ve said before, I think they are very cool. I’m very afraid of idiots. I know very well that there are a lot of fuckwits out there (many of whom don’t understand statistics in the slightest). My biggest fear is that my kids will be off playing at some other kids’ house, and that kid will have found and brought out a family gun. I don’t live in such fear of people in general enough such that I feel a need to play the odds game and arm myself against them. ---
**Author:** ![Bobotheoptimist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/919ad9/32.png) [@Bobotheoptimist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bobotheoptimist)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/68 "2008-10-28T04:35:47Z")
> [@TVeblen](#): > > It’s fine to disagree. > > _In my experience_, pre-teen kids lack the maturity to handle firearms, even when they can handle them physically. I’m willing to grant my condemnation might be too broad. It goes right against the grain and all my experience but hey, I’ve been wrong before and will be again. Well ok then. That’s reasonable and I sure can’t argue with your experience. I don’t know the kids you know, you don’t know the kids I know. And I agree that walking through a gun show isn’t experience. Drumming in the safety rules from the time the child is old enough to make a pretend gun out of a banana is a start, as is sending the kid to his room for pointing a **toy** gun at his brother. Spending hours together at the range or in the forest watching how he handles it when he thinks no one is looking is a pretty good indicator. But an 8 year old that’s never even held one probably isn’t ready for an Uzi. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/69 "2008-10-28T04:52:24Z")
> [@Bobotheoptimist](#): > > Well ok then. That’s reasonable and I sure can’t argue with your experience. I don’t know the kids you know, you don’t know the kids I know. > > And I agree that walking through a gun show isn’t experience. Drumming in the safety rules from the time the child is old enough to make a pretend gun out of a banana is a start, as is sending the kid to his room for pointing a **toy** gun at his brother. Spending hours together at the range or in the forest watching how he handles it when he thinks no one is looking is a pretty good indicator. But an 8 year old that’s never even held one probably isn’t ready for an Uzi. 8 year olds should be shooting a Daisy BB Air Rifle… not a mini-uzi, full auto. ---
**Author:** ![BoBettie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@BoBettie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BoBettie)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/70 "2008-10-28T05:19:32Z")
> [@devilsknew](#): > > 8 year olds should be shooting a Daisy BB Air Rifle… not a mini-uzi, full auto. You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!! ---
**Author:** ![Ghanima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Ghanima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ghanima)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/71 "2008-10-28T06:07:26Z")
So this is kind of the gun equivalent of handing the keys to a sports car with a V-12 engine to an eight year old and saying, “Here kid, you drive?” ---
**Author:** ![CutterJohn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/91b2a8/32.png) [@CutterJohn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CutterJohn)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/72 "2008-10-28T06:13:14Z")
Twas a tragedy. The parent was an idiot for letting the kid fire a weapon that he is obviously not strong enough to handle, being only 8. 8 is when you shoot a semi auto .22LR like a ruger 10/22(Coincidentally, the age I got my ruger 10/22. 😃 ). So you have an idiot parent and a tragic death. This happens a lot, and is far more common with other things than guns. The fact that it was a gun just adds the extra level of hysteria. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/73 "2008-10-28T06:18:31Z")
I think that is a bad analogy. For the parent, I think it’s more like when a parent sends their kid off to war. Naieve, patriotic, blind fanatiscm… ain’t my kid GREAT!!! Then the great tragedy. That kid was more like a tiny tim, Industrial Revolution, Child Laborer that got shredded in the Gin or loom. Trust and no-choice. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/74 "2008-10-28T06:23:19Z")
> [@devilsknew](#): > > That kid was more like a tiny tim, Industrial Revolution, Child Laborer that got shredded in the Gin or loom. Trust and no-choice. Our Industry now is making weapons and soldiers. Our export is war… that is why our economy fails. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/75 "2008-10-28T10:06:45Z")
[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081028/ap\_on\_re\_us/boy\_shoots\_himself](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081028/ap_on_re_us/boy_shoots_himself) > [@](#): > > “This accident was truly a mystery to me,” said Bizilj, director of emergency medicine at Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford, Conn. “This is a horrible event, a horrible travesty, and I really don’t know why it happened.” “. . . truly a mystery . . . .” “. . . don’t know why it happened.” Into denial much? It happened because you, yes you Bizilj, took your eight year old son to go play with an Uzi. Shit for brains. You child did not deserve you. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/76 "2008-10-28T10:35:57Z")
> [@Ghanima](#): > > So this is kind of the gun equivalent of handing the keys to a sports car with a V-12 engine to an eight year old and saying, “Here kid, you drive?” Well, more putting him in the driver’s seat with the engine running. It’s _possible_ for a five or eight year old to drive a car. You hear funny news stories about it all the time. But if you put him behind the wheel of a Lambo, it’s… not going to be pretty any way you look at it. This isn’t a gun rights issue. This is a _moron_ issue. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/77 "2008-10-28T11:19:21Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > I was just reading CNN, and just about to start a thread about this. > > At first, just reading the headline, I was thinking what kind of asshole leaves an uzi somewhere that a child could get at it. Then I read the article. > > Are you fucking kidding me? Adult supervision my puckered asshole. You don’t give an 8 year old kid a fucking machine gun! > > I’m just completely appalled by this. Seriously, how in the name of Richard J Gatling, could it be considered fun thing to do to put such a deadly, hard to control, weapon into the hands of an 8 year old child? > > And it will all be sobbed about as a horrible accident. Bullshit. Whoever is in charge of the fun little look-how-big-my-cock-is gun fair should be thrown in fucking jail for this. According to the law, do they distinguish between machine guns and other firearms? The article seemed to say that IF permission and supervision are in place, this child handling this particular weapon was within the law. ---
**Author:** ![Mellivora\_capensis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mellivora\_capensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mellivora_capensis)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/78 "2008-10-28T11:49:36Z")
Whenever I teach a first-timer how to fire a semi-auto, I always put one round only in the magazine. Rinse, lather, repeat. Until they get the hang of the kick, that’s all they get - one in the mag. You’re just looking for shit by loading a full clip, adult or no adult. An 8 year old with a fully loaded Uzi? I wouldn’t dream of it. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/79 "2008-10-28T11:59:01Z")
> [@devilsknew](#): > > 8 year olds should be shooting a Daisy BB Air Rifle… not a mini-uzi, full auto. Amen. I was shooting bb guns at 8, but was in no way ready for anything like a 22 until I was about 10 or 11. I’ve fired several fully-auto 9mm submachine guns, and none of them are anywhere near appropriate for a small child- they’re just too heavy for them to hold steady, and when you factor in the recoil, almost certainly too much for them to handle. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838/80 "2008-10-28T12:11:26Z")
“Yeah, I’m teachin’ my boy about guns and how they protect the family from–” _POWPOWPOW_ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/8-year-old-boy-kills-himself-with-ak-47/469838.md?page=5)