I’ve never considered the Uzi particularly ergonomic. In a full auto example, it will be firing from an open bolt. So, you will have a heavy bolt slamming back and forth at a high rate of speed. A child who isn’t strong enough to truly handle the weapon will, as we saw, quickly lose control in full auto. The “instructor” should have known this. He paid with his life for his poor judgement. Young kids can be, and have been, taught to shoot. I’ve done it with my own kids; but, you start them with more appropriate weapons than a submachine gun.
Most likely, no. An smg is not the place to begin.
Exactly. While the link that Bullitt provided was a complete failure as an effort to show that hundreds of 9 year old girls safely fire off Uzis, the school he linked to has excellent age-appropriate firearms courses, well above Nevada state standards.
It’s about exposing a child in your control to a dangerous situation. It’s called child endangerment. Legal to do or not they gave there consent in writing to let their child handle a fully automatic weapon and that weapon ended up killing someone and could have easily killed their child and themselves. In cases such as this with Children s Services the burden is what’s in the best interest of the child? Would a reasonable person think that giving 9 year old control of an fully automatic weapon was placing the child in danger? Since someone was killed by the child while under their care (they filmed it, they were standing right there with the waiver in their pocket) then there should be questions about their parenting and their ability to care for the child. What is in the best interest of the child needs to be asked.
If a kid wants to experience full auto, and I can understand why s/he would after watching movies and playing videogames, there are vastly safer options. Airsoft comes to mind; the green gas models are more entertaining to me than the electric models, YMMV. For a little bump up to a more entertaining level of destructiveness there is the drozd. These things still require close supervision by an adult, of course, but the chances of anybody getting killed are pretty remote.
That’s going way too far. “Child endangerment” requires that the child be in a situation that more likely than not the child would be exposed to harm, and that a “reasonable person” would know this.
I tend to agree that allowing 9 year olds to fire automatic weapons is bone-headed, but I disagree that it rises to the level of child endangerment. The parents hired an alleged expert who was right there with his hands on the kid. The parents did not, in my opinion, fall beneath a criminal standard of care. A “reasonable person” could conclude that the activity was reasonably safe when engaged in on a gun range with a firearms expert directly handling it.
The child did not die in the situtation you cite. Courts have decided differently in cases where children have died in locked cars. Someone died in this instance, an investigation would be justified.
To quote your own cite: Injury: actual or potential
Child endangerment laws are designed to punish behavior that might lead to a child becoming harmed, but they do not require that children actually suffer an injury or physical harm. State laws often categorize child endangerment as placing a child in a situation that might endanger the child’s life, health, welfare, morals, or emotional well-being. However, child endangerment may still be charged in cases where the actions of the caregiver did eventually result in the child being physically injured or harmed.
The child has been mentally harmed and a man is dead; all caused by their actions, they put her in that situation. Again I ask, why shouldn’t they be investigated?
I think you are misunderstanding the point of what you have cited: it merely states the obvious - that “child endangerment” doesn’t require that the child actually be harmed, but of course, if the child is harmed, a charge may still result.
The issue is whether the care-givers fell below the standard of care sufficiently to require criminal sanctions.
As a practical matter, the actual death of a person certainly does bring the matter to the attention of authorities, but it does not in and of itself demonstrate that the caregivers fell below the appropriate standard of care. If they did, it would not matter, in theory, whether any actual harm resulted or not; they would be just as guilty if the gun sport went off without anyone actually being hurt. It is falling below the standard of care that is culpable.
To my mind, this is “a tragic accident” and not “child endangerment”. The appropriate response by the authorities would be to tighten the regualtions on the gun-range operators, not to charge the parents with a crime.
That girl will grow up to be Vice President some day.
& you know this how? You’re a mental health professional who has treated the girl?
I’d also argue that he’s dead because of his actions, not the parents. He was the professional in charge of the scene. he was the one who decided she was ready to go full-auto after one round. He was the professional who should know how to position himself both for his own safety & for hers/others. I don’t know what happened as to whether he thought he was in the right position & miscalculated or was distracted at an inopportune moment but he did something wrong & paid for it with his life.
Are you also calling on parents to be charged if their child is hurt/killed in Little League? It’s happened before so it’s reasonable to expect it happens again?
I understand the need for pedantry at times. I even engage in it. But it is obvious that there are many ranges who cater to the casual or novice shooter that allow children to shoot automatic weapons. It’s also obvious that they are not going to have exact stats on how many children fire which weapon each year. If it wasn’t happening and it wasn’t lucrative they wouldn’t advertise it.
http://shoot.machinegunsvegas.com/products/the-kids-experience MP5 and M4 http://www.battlefieldvegas.com/pages/frequently-asked-questions minimum recoil or mounted only http://www.getyourguide.com/las-vegas-l58/little-giants-machine-gun-experience-for-kids-t36531/ Full auto but .22LR http://gungarage.com/about/faq 8 years old age restriction but reserve the right to refuse if deemed unsafe.I stopped looking. Those are all about Vegas. It’s hard to find out about ranges in Arizona right now since all the google hits are about the incident.
But I think you can concede(without putting an exact number on it) that lots of kids are allowed at these ranges and it is safe to assume that most of the time it doesn’t result in dead bodies. That doesn’t make it more or less stupid.
According to this story which hits on both the incident and gun tourism in general, the range violated it’s own stated age restriction of 10 years old. ETA forgot link http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/girl-accidentally-kills-gun-instructor-uzi-25143005
Anyone who really believes that DCPP should be called on the parents please feel free to call them yourself. 1 800 NJABUSE
I think it has one of those overfolding stocks that look like they’re made out of coat hanger wire. Which makes me this it was a mini uzi (which has even worse flip than a regular uzi).
I learned on a single round bolt action with .22 shorts. The front and back of the rifle were chained to the floor and you could only fire from the prone position until you got cleared to handle a firearm by the scout rangemaster.
Right now I use a break action .22 rifle so its just as accurate with short rounds as it is with long rounds and can only hold one cartridge at a time. I think it has a lot of advantages for teaching gun safety.
He also seems to be pro-gay marriage and into cats.
You can rent a machine gun at plenty of gun ranges.
You might be onto something. Let’s hope she ends up drawing strength and wisdom from this.
Upthread, Andy L mentioned Adlai Stevenson (Adlai Stevenson II - Wikipedia):
And then there’s the death of the brother of Juan Carlos I of Spain:
(Juan Carlos I - Wikipedia)
Nine year old wid an uzi? That’s nothin’. Why when Chuck Norris was nine months old, he shot his way out a his mama’s womb t’ FREEDOM ba spittin’ six-hundred rounds pur minute.
I would recommend not doing it with a Muslim coworker with a Muslim name from a Muslim country as a team building exercise when he is supposed to get on a plane that afternoon. Being cavity searched because you are a foreigner with gunpowder reside all over your hands and your first name is Ahmed is not a good way to say “enjoy your time in America.”
(we actually went bowling instead when someone pointed out that a full auto range might not be the best way to spend our morning with Ahmed before he had to clear security at the airport).
Yeah okay, but you want to wash your hands really well after the range. Lead residue isn’t good for anyone, regardless of religion or ethnicity.
I, too, had a knee-jerk reaction to this.
However, I am satisfied that the operators of these shooting ranges are taking adequate precautions to avoid incidents like this, and indeed, the rarity of an accident in such venues speaks to that safety record.
By contrast, seven American high school football players were killed last fall from on-field injuries. A school-age user is much safer firing an uzi under qualified adult supervision, than on a football field on a Friday night.
Kids with guns kill people every week in America, maybe every day, and those who do have probably received no supervised training.