You are so wrong and it happens many (hundreds?) of times each day, safely.
The incompetence was Charles Vacca’s, sad to say because he paid for it with his life. The real tragedy is the girl will have to live with Vacca’s mistake which directly led to his death at her trigger finger.
If it was a 9 yo boy, wouldn’t this still be a stupid needless tragedy?
If it was an Ingram M10 and not a weapon used to symbolize an uninvolved nation’s strength, pride, and right to exist, would there be as many vocal objections to labeling this needless death as an act of stupidity?
If it were a boy of equal size and weight given a gun with equal light weight and nasty kick then, fuck yeah. I don’t think this “weapon used to symbolize an uninvolved nation’s strength, pride, and right to exist” stuff factors into this situation at all.
I have pretty good anti-Israel radar, and I’ve sensed absolutely none of that here - especially seeing as 99 out of 100 Israelis would call the “shooting instructor” in question an utter git.
They’re not a small operation, and they put hundreds of shooters of all ages through their ranges each day. They might have other locations besides the one that, apparently, is about an hour’s drive from where this tragedy took place.
Since that range is located in Nevada, it is under the Nevada law discussed previously. So the instructor can’t hand the Uzi directly to the child. Instead he hands it to the parent, who then hands it to the child. That intermediate step somehow makes the entire process completely safe.
WTF? You gave that cite as a response to your claim that hundreds of 9 year old girls safely fire off Uzis. They do have 2 and 4 day Uzi courses, but they do not indicate what the age limits are for that particular course. Since you made the claim, and you provided this cite, why don’t you do a little digging to see if your own cite is valid?
Perhaps if one is not strong enough to control the recoil on their own that person should not be firing the weapon in the first place? Is any 9 year old girl capable of handling the recoil from anything other than a .22 rifle?
Depends on the girl and the gun. I taught my stepson to shoot a .410 single shot when he was about 7 years old, and he was not a particularly strong child. My daughter has been shooting a crossbow since she was about 11 or 12 (the same one Daryl used in the first few seasons of The Walking Dead). A major factor in controlling the gun is being able to handle the weight of the gun itself. The crossbow is heavy for its size, but she is able to hold it up easily and cock it herself. She can control it. A weapon that the shooter is struggling just to aim is not under control.
I don’t get the hate for the parents here. They were participating in an event that is legal and advertised as safe even for young children. We don’t know they’re background, but being from New Jersey, I wouldn’t be surprised if none of them are very experienced with firearms, and thought that being at a range in a controlled environment would be a good time to be exposed. I agree with them too: learning to shoot at a range with an instructor is probably the best place to learn to shoot. The fault here is mostly with the range, who encourage this sort of thing to happen, and partly with the instructor, for not preventing the child from using this type of gun.
Yeah. What’s an uzi weigh? Maybe 8 pounds loaded? This girl looked to be your average nine your old. And does it make sense to say that an Uzi is a top-heavy weapon which makes handling recoil even more difficult?