Boy, 8, killed in Mass. gun show accident
Was this an unavoidable accident, or should someone be held responsible for this tragedy?
Of course this was not an unavoidable accident. A child should not have been handling a weapon, especially not a loaded one, even if Daniel Boone himself were supervising.
There are no unavoidable accidents involving guns–or at least darn few. Especially where children are involved. Keep the kid from firing the gun, then the kid can’t accidentally shoot himself in the head.
Who should be held responsible? I don’t know–the parent(s) bear a significant amount of moral guilt, and perhaps the certified instructor as well.
But my judgement where gun safety is concerned is uninformed, and I’m not necessarily sure that someone should be held financially or legally responsible for the situation.
I don’t approve of guns in general, although I do have some respect for those who do practice safe gun handling techniques and who enjoy hunting, target practice or wish to use guns for self-protection (in more or less that order). So I’m reluctant to say that the only or best way to prevent a similar incident in the future is not to allow children to handle such weapons.
I wouldn’t classify it as “unavoidable”. I don’t know all the details, but upon a cursory look at the article, the boys’ father apparently allowed the 8YO to fire the Uzi because it was a small weapon. With a big kick for a small child, sadly. Dad was reaching for his camera to presumably get some shots of his boy firing the weapon when the accident occured.
The accident could have been avoided by the use of better judgement by the Professional Instructor and the sponsers of the event. They might want to reconsider the age limits for autofire weapons. The father might have felt that it was “perfectly safe” for his son to handle the weapon with their approval.
It’s a tragedy. My heart goes out to everyone involved, especially the brother of the boy.
The boy had fired handguns and rifles before. He was under supervision. The weapon was chosen explicitly for its light recoil. Up to that point, I don’t see anything irresponsible. Do Uzis have a select-fire mode? I would definitely have insisted on his firing some single rounds first before trying full-auto mode. Maybe eight years old is just too darn young to handle full-auto.
P.S. “small gun” and “light recoil” are not the same; often the opposite. Maybe a heavier gun would have absorbed more of the kick.
It was an incredibly stupid thing to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjfFFsLCdn8 It is well known how any pistol will rise out of control and rotate when someone too weak or too inexperienced to hold it pulls the trigger.
A rifle might be acceptable, but a pistol is simply something an 8 year old doesn’t have the grip to manage. Especially on auto. If the instructor had also been holding the gun, maybe.
If there is no law against this, and the supervision and instruction were carried out correctly then no, no one should be held to account for this.
However, and it’s a HUGE however, I find it unbelievable that an eight year old firing an automatic weapon is actually lawful. But obviously I come from a culture (UK) where guns just aren’t something we like to have hanging around. For anybody. Let alone a bloody 8 year old.
Fear, there’s a real disconnect between the title of the thread and the question you’re asking. To answer your first question I think most reasonable people on this board are going to agree that we should try to prevent children from killing themselves either accidentally or on purpose. Connecting the first question to the second is problematic. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive as one can believe we should try to prevent accidents while at the same time not think someone needs to be held responsible (i.e. legally punished).
I’m not one of those people that believes someone needs to be punished every time there is an accident. We accept that sometimes people are going to get killed or injured when they engage in certain activities. However there does come a point when gross negligence enters into the equation and then I think the parties responsible should be subject to legal sanctions. (I’m no lawyer so I’m not using the legal term for gross negligence.)
When I was 8 years old the closest thing to a firearm I came into contact with was a Daisy BB gun. While I didn’t learn how to fire a rifle until I was 12 years of age I’m not necessary against teaching an 8 year old how to shoot. I do have several questions about this 8 year old. Did he have any shooting experience prior to being given an UZI? when I was 12 the extent of my firearms experience was a .22 rifle and a .22 pistol.
I was going to wax philosophically there for a minute but I think I’ll just cut to the chase. It is completely unacceptable to hand an 8 year old a fully automatic weapon even if he’s under supervision. This ain’t Somalia. I’d be hard pressed to say that nobody should be held responsible for this kid’s death. It’s just a matter of figuring out from how high we want to jump on them.
Apparently, we cannot depend on common sense to prevent tragedies like this. Should there be a law forbidding 8-year-olds from shooting machine guns, and punishes those who give them the gun? Or would that violate the second amendment? If so, are our hands tied, and there is nothing we can do to proactively prevent idiots from endangering their own children?
Without advocating any new legislation, I wouldpoint out that there would hardly be a Second Amendment question in regards to such a law. We restrict the rights of children to prohibit them from voting, from driving cars, from entering into contracts, and a host of other actions based on their presumed level of competence regardless of whether the action is guaranteed by the Constitution.
So, it’s like Calvin’s dad’s explanation of how they find out how much weight a bridge can hold: drive heavier and heavier trucks across it until it collapses, then rebuild it and put up a sign saying the limit is the weight of the last truck to make it across.
So now we know that 8 is too young. Good to know. Were I a 9-year-old gun aficionado and my dad handed me an Uzi to test fire, I’d probably be thinking, “I don’t wanna…”
It sort of goes without saying, but those responsible for the accident will likely be punished by their guilt for the rest of their lives. As far as I can tell a crime wasn’t committed. If driving a car or buying and consuming booze were legal for eight-year-olds, and one died in a car wreck or from alcohol poisoning, I’d have to come to the same conclusion.
11 answers so far in the debate, 4 pages of strawmen and ad hominem in The Pit.
Hentor The Barbarian is practically spewing spittle in my face right through the monitor.
Look, these firearms (fully automatic) are so heavily regulated in the U.S. (and have been since 1933 or '34) as to be prohibitively expensive to acquire legally. I’m willing to bet my next paycheck that all of the firearms at the gun club/show where the boy died were legally owned.
This boy’s death is probably the first death from a legally owned, fully automatic firearm since that police officer took his dept. issue M-16 and killed his wife a few decades ago.
The issue isn’t the weapon, or the legal controls necessary to obtain one.
The issue was the level of supervision present in this particular case. The “instructor” (I’m wondering exactly what his “certification” was, and where he got it from) was negligent.
But not by allowing an 8 y/o to fire a fully automatic firearm; my nephew fired an MP-5 submachinegun on full auto at about the same age, without letting a single round go stray. His instructor was on off-duty SWAT cop that was partial owner of the indoor shooting range we were at (they rented fully automatic weapons and gave training and supervision on-site).
No, this “instructor” was negligent by NOT ensuring the boy had proper grip; by NOT ensuring the boy was mentally prepared for what was about to happen when he pulled the trigger; by NOT bracing the boy and the firearm himself for the first couple of bursts, until the boy showed he had some grasp, physically and mentally, for what happens when you pull the trigger on a full automatic firearm.
I routinely see 8 y/o shooting firearms with heavier (albeit not sustained) recoil than an UZI at our local Anheuser Busch sponsored Sportsman’s Range. On any given weekend with decent weather, I see kids confidently, accurately, and above all else, safely discharge 9mm, .38, .357, .40, .45ACP, .45LC, 22L, .223, .30-30, .30-06, 7mm, 20ga, 16ga, 12ga, etc., under safe and sane supervision by their parents.
How long was this kid going to be shooting for? Most people can’t get their hand in the wrist strap in less than 15 seconds.
“Up to that point”? What the hell good is “up to that point”? I’m sure the poor kid almost didn’t shoot himself in the head, too.
Does that mean that uzis are safe even in the hands of (properly supervised) 8-year-olds – as seems to be your point – or does it simply mean that most people aren’t dumb enough to let an 8-year-old shoot an uzi.
In other words, saying “accidents are rare” doesn’t say much about the safety of the gun in the hands of a child, unless you can say that cases of children being allowed to use this gun (under proper supervision) are substantially less rare.
Yes, that was my point, my contention, and my experience.
That’s a loaded question. No way to answer it. A priori, that anyone that lets an 8 y/o fire a SMG is dumb. What part of “trained/supervised by SWAT police officer” in regards to my 9 y/o nephew in my previous post troubles you? That was an MP-5, another kind of 9mm SMG.
Was I dumb then, Tim? Was the off-duty police officer range owner/instructor dumb??
Full auto firearm ownership in the USA is rare; open shoots like this one even more so. I’ve never been to one; only to a very small handfull of privately owned shooting ranges that have full auto firearms available for customers to rent and fire (on-the-premises only; it’s not like they rent it and take it home for the weekend).
But I’m plugged into the gun community, and I can’t recall having ever heard of a firearm-related fatality at one, much less that of a child, even though I know children often attend and sometimes participate.
So in the small world of full auto firearm ownership, and the even smaller world of full auot firearm recreational shooting, children shooting such firearms is probably very, very rare indeed.
Correction to previous post: it appears that there have been two homicides where the murder instrument was a legally owned full auto firearm.
On September 15th, 1988, a 13-year veteran of the Dayton, Ohio police department, Patrolman Roger Waller used his fully automatic MAC-11 .380 caliber submachine gun to kill a police informant, 52-year-old Lawrence Hileman.
Patrolman Waller plead guilty in 1990, and he and an accomplice were sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Note: the 1986 ‘ban’ on sales of new machine guns does not apply to purchases by law enforcement or government agencies.
The other homicide involving a legally owned machine gun, occurred on September 14, 1992, also in Ohio.
Police-owned weapons shouldn’t be part of the discussion - the way they obtain the weapons is different than the NFA requirements and banning NFA weapons wouldn’t affect them anyway. If you’re gonna count police there you might as well document any crimes off duty soldiers commit with their service guns.
As to the OP, what a ridiculously loaded thread - it doesn’t even deserve a response.
Oddly enough, no one in the state’s legislature had thought it necessary to put an age restriction on firing Uzis; they must have thought self-interest of parents and instructors would have been enough …
(But, actually, it’s not an issue of age; it’s strength and experience with guns. I would meet any reasonable age requirement, but I am small, weak, and inexperienced enough to probably do the same thing.)
How evil would I be to say that this is a self-correcting problem? As long as we keep the 8-year olds from getting the guns themselves (which we presume them to be to irresponsible to allow), this is something that is going to self-limit to kids of parents who let their kids handle guns without first ensuring that they have the mental and physical capability to handle the weapon. And that probably won’t happen twice to a family, anyway. Heck, this sort of thing isn’t all that common anyway, is it?
Not necessarily-if done right.
May be a little o/t, but as we’re in GD, here I go:
I’ve sometimes toyed with the idea of not increasing the restrictions on gun ownership, but the rules of liability if your gun hurts someone to a more or less strict rule (whether the liability is criminal, or just civil)-the principle would be that if you own a gun, and it hurts someone, then (excluding self-defense, or if the gun is stolen and promptly reported), the law will presume you to be responsible for the injury.
That wouldn’t be objectionable under the Second Amendment–as it doesn’t stop gun ownership, just makes people pay for the injuries they cause.
The principle would be: Want to have a gun? Think you can keep it safely? Sure. But if something goes wrong, we’re going to hold you liable. If you want to keep it in the kid’s crib, fine–but you’re going to be in trouble if he gets it. That would (IMO) get people to solve the issue for themselves, and a lot easier than through regulation.
I’ve been shooting for years, and I more or less agree with the principle that there are very very few gun accidents not caused by (in effect) operator error/carelessness (or supervisor/instructor carelessness, as here where the kid is using it under supervision).