Instructor accidentally killed by 9yr old girl with sub-machine gun

[L00b]

I was thinking children, how many thousands of children have fired an Uzi or other gun without accidentally killing someone?

How many thousands of 9 year-old children have fired a 9x19 mm machine pistol with a 600 ROF, on full-auto and unslung/unshouldered, without injuring or killing anyone?

 

I don't know. Not a clue. But, since you asked the question and it is your argument, why don't you find out and enlighten us with some credible info?

 

EDIT (in view of your own): yes, I am well aware that very many thousands of children learn to shoot a firearm in their early years. Note the deliberate use of the verb 'learn' preceding 'to shoot'.

 

I did myself, and I am currently teaching gun safety and handling to my own 10 year old with a harmless BB ('airsoft') gun; a gas blowback unit, so she's even learning (a bit) about recoil.

 

I now await your stats about the proportion of fully-automatic handheld firearms (as opposed to .177 and .22 e.g.) used in that context.

[firemanbob]

By 'shot for his country' do you mean at inanimate targets, or at human beings?

 

 

Ooh, now that's a hard one. Let me think.

 

How about because (strange as this will no doubt seem to you, with your gun-happy mentality), not everyone sees childhood as a time when immature human beings are encouraged or trained to use lethal weapons, which, when all said and done, have a much more powerful association with murdering people than they do with simply improving hand-eye co-ordination.

 

If you want to improve a 9 year old's hand-eye co-ordination, you could just let them have a childhood, let them play out a lot, and it will happen by itself. If you specifically want them to be good at target practice, let them take up archery, preferably with better supervision than in this tragic case). But don't try to make soldiers out of 9 year olds and don't try to tell me that that is not the purpose nor the effect of this kind of nonsense. What on earth were the parents thinking of to encourage this in the first place?

 

That very dangerous though, children that are playing very often have accidents and occasionally die as a result, some fall out of trees, some run in front of cars, some drown whilst swimming.

 

 

An 8-year-old San Rafael girl visiting the Lawrence Hall of Science in the hills above UC Berkeley was shot in the leg by an arrow Tuesday, police said. That could so easily have been a fatal accident.

[Obelix]

Remarkably, there was a very similar accident in 2008, this time tragically killing a child. http://abcnews.go.com/US/jurors-uzi-trial-brace-graphic-replay/story?id=12556398

 

The kind of crass fascination that the US has with its guns will keep on killing again and again again until Americans wake up and get real about their selfish attitude to guns and their terrible death toll.

 

What about something else used to settle the American west...?

 

http://www.kayakforum.com/cgi-bin/Technique/archive.cgi/md/read/id/4360/sbj/paddling-deaths/

 

Lot's of deaths there as well and far less people kayak than shoot too... but no one demands a ban on all kayaks....

[aliceBB]

That very dangerous though, children that are playing very often have accidents and occasionally die as a result, some fall out of trees, some run in front of cars, some drown whilst swimming.

 

Breathtaking.

 

Let me explain: children deserve a childhood. It is impossible to eliminate all physical risk to them unless you lock them in a padded room all their young lives, allowing them out only under close supervision, which would be cruel for different reasons.

 

It goes without saying that they need the freedom to play out in reasonably safe environments and be taught how to cope with the minor dangers which might present themselves. The major one, road traffic, I do not include in that, in that children below the age of about 9 should not be allowed near roads unsupervised - their brains cannot reliably or safely process information about vehicles moving near them before that age. Ideally nobody (adult or child) should swim unaccompanied in open water, and only in pools if a strong swimmer.

 

My objection to gun-training for 9 year olds is that it embeds a mentality which lets them think it is OK to point something powerful and potentially lethal at something and blast it to oblivion. That feeling can be quite addictive. I would not want my 9 year old to get addicted to that feeling. You will not stop children playing with toy guns or makeshift guns (bits of wood, Lego, etc - my son used to take a bite out of a triangular sandwich and pretend it was a gun), but I think it is irresponsible madness to encourage it.

[Obelix]

 

If you want to improve a 9 year old's hand-eye co-ordination, you could just let them have a childhood, let them play out a lot, and it will happen by itself. If you specifically want them to be good at target practice, let them take up archery,

 

So hang on - you are not going to let them use a firearm (primarily used for hunting and war) but you will let them use a bow (primarily used for hunting and war) and an arrow injury from a starting bow is much more lethal than from a starting rifle.....

 

Like it or not, there is no difference between archery and firearm shooting, despite what the gutter press have been telling you.

[firemanbob]

I don't know. Not a clue. But,

 

Me neither but I will presume that it is a large number because of the amount of firing ranges in the states that offer children the opportunity to fire one.

[Coutts]

Like it or not, there is no difference between archery and firearm shooting, despite what the gutter press have been telling you.

 

So, a 9 year old is just as safe firing an Uzi 9mm automatic machine gun as a bow and arrow?

[Obelix]

I do not include in that, in that children below the age of about 9 should not be allowed near roads unsupervised - their brains cannot reliably or safely process information about vehicles moving near them before that age.

 

Wow - you have such little faith in the average child. At that age most of the Cubs in my Scout group are walking to the hut on their own across a number of busy roads.

 

---------- Post added 28-08-2014 at 14:06 ----------

 

So, a 9 year old is just as safe firing an Uzi 9mm automatic machine gun as a bow and arrow?

 

Would you care to show me where I said that?

 

No of course not, because I never did.

 

Moving on then....

[aliceBB]

Wow - you have such little faith in the average child. At that age most of the Cubs in my Scout group are walking to the hut on their own across a number of busy roads.

 

On the contrary. I have huge faith in children. it's the adults in charge of them I worry about

 

I walked to school unaccompanied at the age of 7, too, but everything I have read on the subject suggests that many 7 and even 8 year old brains are not neurologically fine-tuned enough to cope with fast traffic, so it should not be assumed they will be able to cross safely by waiting for a gap. I am sure that if they are trained to cross only at a pelican type crossing, with lights, etc, they will be fine. But they shouldn't really be allowed to cross roads where there are no crossings, at that age.

 

Or perhaps the Scouts under your leadership have amazingly advanced powers in this respect.

[firemanbob]

Breathtaking.

 

Let me explain: children deserve a childhood. It is impossible to eliminate all physical risk to them unless you lock them in a padded room all their young lives, allowing them out only under close supervision, which would be cruel for different reasons.

 

It goes without saying that they need the freedom to play out in reasonably safe environments and be taught how to cope with the minor dangers which might present themselves. The major one, road traffic, I do not include in that, in that children below the age of about 9 should not be allowed near roads unsupervised - their brains cannot reliably or safely process information about vehicles moving near them before that age. Ideally nobody (adult or child) should swim unaccompanied in open water, and only in pools if a strong swimmer.

 

My objection to gun-training for 9 year olds is that it embeds a mentality which lets them think it is OK to point something powerful and potentially lethal at something and blast it to oblivion. That feeling can be quite addictive. I would not want my 9 year old to get addicted to that feeling. You will not stop children playing with toy guns or makeshift guns (bits of wood, Lego, etc - my son used to take a bite out of a triangular sandwich and pretend it was a gun), but I think it is irresponsible madness to encourage it.

 

Everyone being different they want to do different things, some want to climb trees, mountains, swim in the sea, canoe down rapids, ride a motor bike, shoot a gun, but all these and many more activities carry the risk of being injured or killed. All the activities can be done safely if the right precautions are taken, the shooting was simply down to incompetent instruction just as someone can fall of a rock face if they have an incompetent instructor.