9 Year old girl accidently kills gun instructor

A very sad story indeed! Why would any gun range allow a small child to fire a powerful automatic weapon?!!

 

Unbelievable that this was allowed to happen!

 

The USA has about 300+ million citizens and about the same number of guns. Doesn't that influence in how people in other countries think in that everyone in the USA has a gun? A gun registry doesn't exist either so the amount of guns are an estimate.

I feel sorry for both parties and especially sorry for the girl in what happened and hope that she can overcome this tragedy.

 

This whole thing is unfathomable to me. My dad hunted, we had guns in the house, we were told in no uncertain terms they were not toys, we were not to touch them unless an adult handed them to us under close supervision, and they were kept locked in a cabinet the key to which rarely left my dad's pocket. Legitimate hunting guns...you know, rifles and shotguns. No need for a rapid-fire automatic weapon, because we wanted to eat the animals shot, not obliterate them from the face of the earth. Who in their right mind would ever hand a bloody UZI to a nine-year-old????

I feel for everyone involved, and hope that the girl's parents maybe understand now that their thoughts on gun ownership and use are maybe a little extreme and should be curtailed a bit.

Curious where you get your numbers if, as you say, "a gun registry doesn't exist".

 

Here's one link out of many: http://www.gunfaq.org/2013/03/how-many-guns-in-the-united-states/

 

Laura the comment I made about the total of firearms in the USA was not meant to accuse anyone of having firearms. Must be a co-incidence that population and total of guns are about equal. Of course that doesn't mean that everyone has a gun as many are gun collectors. Lastly, the heatpackin' geek had as last count 3 or 4. Wished he would be able to count how many. :-D

 

I seen the video on the news (it stopped before the last few shots.) Muzzle rise caused the gun to climb up and to the left where the instructor was leaning in.
This happened a year or so before, that time a young boy killed himself with a auto weapon that climbed and he couldn't get off the trigger. Sad that it happened twice.

 

Very sad situation for everyone involved. I understand that accidents can occur but with a bit of logical thinking this situation should never have been able to happen. Why should someone so young and probably not physically strong enough to handle an automatic weapon be allowed to shoot one under any circumstances :confused

@Laura

Although possible I don't think this is necessarily the case. We started both our children in a gun club at ages 10 and 12. We don't own any guns although I learned about guns when I was a kid in Air Cadets so I wanted my kids to learn about the dangers of pistols and rifles and gain some respect and responsibility.
Why would thinking parents do this?
Well in our case a 12 year old child from our suburb was accidentally shot by another child at a birthday party, neither child knew anything about guns except what they had seen in movies and they were at someone else's birthday party where they found a pistol that shouldn't have been left out let alone been left loaded (the father was a security guard). Another accident that should never have happened and so I didn't want this to ever happen to my kids!!!
After going to the gun club, if either of my children had been in that situation they would have known the danger and may have even been able to prevent the accident.
BTW my son ended up the Junior Australian National Champion for Metallic Silhouette (rifle) and also 3 Positional (rifle) and also the Junior Victorian champion for 25 metre Off Hand (pistol) and he also won the trophy and prizes for Junior National Sporting Shooter of the Year. My kids between them have about 50 trophies and medals for state and national events.
It is interesting to note that neither of my children continued with shooting past their 19th birthdays as in our country there is a real stigma if you shoot guns for a hobby and you are shunned by most people so life just became too difficult for both of them when other people found out they were target shooters so it was easier to walk away from the sport. Maybe they will start shooting for sport again later in life and then again maybe they won't but now both of them have a very healthy respect for weapons so my original objective was realised

 

So I hear on the news tonight that this thing with kids being allowed to fire any weapon of their choice on this particular shooting range is a TOURIST ATTRACTION. The family of the girl was on vacation from New Jersey. I can only repeat, I find this whole thing unfathomable. Obviously they weren't there for serious instruction on how to handle a weapon or any other noble reason. They thought it was neat. And the shooting range encourages it.

Sorry, oma, just tweakin' you a little bit. The thing is, there is no real way to tell how many guns are owned in the US. Sure, you can tally up all the registered guns of whatever type and say that's how many there are, but lord only knows how many unregistered weapons there are. They may be unregistered because they're owned by a criminal, or by someone who refuses to acknowledge the state's right to regulate, or by someone who bought them before registration was required. Or, they're weapons that don't require registration, because those exist as well. When my grandmother died we ended up with a total of 33 unregistered weapons we had to do something with: 2 hand guns, 18 rifles, and 13 shotguns. Plus assorted ammunition. They were all still in her house from when her husband died. So there's 33 weapons owned by one man...makes up for 32 other people who don't own one. :-D

 

I totally agree and my kids only shot small bore .22 rifles until they were 14. An uzi in the hands of a young child is a real lapse in parental responsibility in my opinion. Whether it was for fun or whatever reason it is still a high power automatic weapon in the hands of a young child that from the video doesn't appear to have the body strength to prevent muzzle lift when the gun is being fired. Bad judgement there.

Speaking of the lifelong effects caused by one lapse of judgement by the carers in a young child's life as appears to have happened in this case ...... just tragic

 

Thanks for this extra info Tibbs. Maybe they will rethink what constitutes a safe TOURIST ATTRACTION. I totally agree with you.... this is unfathomable and by any weapon does this mean assault weapons and even bigger machine guns are available rolleyes

So a family on vacation visits this gun range as a family tourist thing to do and their 9 year old daughter leaves as an inadvertent killer rolleyes I said before tragic
Crikey what are the gun range owners thinkin :confused

 

This is the latest in this mornings papers over here
http://www.theage.com.au/world/9yearold-with-uzi-a-shooting-that-shocked-a-jaded-nation-20140828-109alq.html

 

Three or four guns. You people crack me up. :-D

This is very sad. Best I can tell is the instructor lost control of the situation. Thoughts and prayers to the gun instructor's family, and to the little girl.

Different kids mature at different rates. But giving a full auto to a 9 year old? Just does not seem prudent. At the local indoor range, there are holes in the ceiling, and also holes in the walls 180 degrees from the firing line. Scary stuff, I only shoot there if with a friend or by myself.

 

I want very much to make a very unpleasant post. I am exercising considerable restraint.

So, first of all, it's not an Uzi. It's a mini Uzi. A full size Uzi would have a much longer barrel and thus would have been too long actually hit the instructor.

Second, he said full auto, so clearly he thought she was capable of controlling it.

Third, this was one accident, with a tragic end, as compared to the thousands of times that it goes completely right. Yet this will get years of coverage.

 

It have read that many instructors working with young kids or new shooters will just load one bullet the first time they shoot. If they don't freak out and point the gun in an unsafe direction, they will load 2 bullets, 3, then if they do OK, will load a full mag. Seems like a good thing for full auto as well.

Musksnipe, didn't we agree on something back in 2012? :-D

 

That's the basic procedure with new shooters at the ranges I am familier with. Total breakdown in protocol/procedure at that range, no doubt. Certainly did not have to happen. Poor kid.

I think I saw that in 2012, late fall, maybe? It was rainy and cold in Los Angeles. I was working out of the bunko division when . . . no, wait - that was an episode of Dragnet.

Nope. I'm pretty sure it never happened, Fred & Musksnipe . . . :-D So today is a special day!

 

As usual I think different.
Watch this link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yECmG1Dn2M
the son is the only protection they have.
You may say "that is a war zone, he needs to do that", to and I say "If you are not ready for war now, you are already too late."

How many children have been through the course?
If it has run for 25 years without incident the shooting is unfortunate but not even news. We lose an instructor every 5 years in our small arms training classes.

I agree with Fred_G this was probably a procedural breakdown. That is always how we lose instructors. Complacency and ignorance occasionally creep in.

I know most here are entrenched in peace time thinking. This is usually a good thing.
How old do you think the children are when they are forced to fight for IS or Boko Haram? They seem to be pretty effective at very young ages.

 

Burgers and Bullets? That place is a cash grabbing theme park with machine guns posing as a shooting range. Who in his right mind would hand a kid who walked in off the streets a machine gun? That's way too much gun for a child, especially one with no experience.

The only thing those kids are effective at is as cannon fodder. It does not require much skill to murder people.

 

ABC13 in Houston did a story on this a few days ago. Even though Texas is the gun capital of the US, the results were quite shocking.

A few gun ranges allow kids as young as five to shoot shotguns and pistols if a parent is supervising. Others have no policy on how young is too young to shoot any type of weapon including automatics and machine guns; it's up to the manager on duty to make a judgement call.

My feeling is this tragedy had nothing to do with gun rights and everything to do with a lack of common sense. Just as there are age limits to drive cars, there should be reasonable rules in place to keep something like this from happening again.

 

Exactly!!! :clap :clap :clap :clap

There is also a huge difference between a child in a war zone carrying and shooting an automatic weapon and a city kid from New Jersey shooting one on vacation.

 

This is what caught my eye! Don't know if the below requirements were changed or still are in place or not.

http://www.vegas.com/tours/other-las-vegas-tours/bullets-burgers-tour/

 

You get a weapon designed by the Israeli military to kill people, used by it's special forces, strong fully grown men highly trained in close quarter combat and weapon handling and put it in the hands of a 9 year old girl on a weekend for fun.

If that sounds strange it's because it is.

Uzi fires from an open bolt which means the entire bold mechanism flies forward just before each round fires, it's also a very light weapon which means it kicks like a mule for a small weapon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoY1GbcWOSQ

No I'm not against guns I love them and was at the gun range on Friday, there were kids there all shooting airguns at metal and paper targets, perfectly safe and everyone including me having a great time.

 

The gun in the video didn't even have a shoulder stock so all of the recoil force had to be controlled by an inexperienced nine year old girls hands and arms, the more I say it the more ridiculous it sounds.

 

Size is not as important as skill. Our Chief Mate is just under 100 lbs, female and always in the top three for pistol, top five for rifle and easily passes the shotgun course. Full auto M14 pushes her back but there is never a control problem, she just uses shorter bursts than I do. I am 6 ft 180 lbs.
and now for something scarier?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SetZ0HOLSpE

 

The problem lies with the instructor, poor body position, poor instructing.
He wont make that mistake again.

 

The hands of a child is no place for any type of military grade assault weapon.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. AND, I wholly agree with musksnipe.

Over and out...

 

Like my boss often says, 'there is no limit on stupidity'.

I am all about teaching kids to shoot, but not like this guy did.

The mekanic I know kids mature at different ages, but I agree, a full auto is a bit much for probably every 9 year old. A semi auto .22 would have been a much better choice.

I have talked to several of my gun friends, and universally, the response is WTF was that gun instructor, and the kid's parents thinking?

 

The instructor's thinking, "$$$$$$$$$$$$"
The parents, "They're professionals. How could this go wrong?"

This place is a spur of the moment, novelty thing. I doubt many go there to gain proficiency with a gun. Shooting a firearm should be treated with a little more respect than playing miniature golf.

 

I don't know how much the instructor makes per student, doubt it is a lot. Parents, step up and watch after your kids!

Now, I must say all classes and such I have taken have been geared towards the student learning in a safe environment.

New shooter, whether 9 or 99 and a full auto don't go together very well to me.

I agree, shooting is a lot more than a game of putt putt. I am going to guess that very few putt putt coaches are killed each year by 9 year old kids. The adults failed this child in MHO.

 

I'm not sure student and instructor are the terms I would use. That guy had no formal training. No NRA courses. No PD courses. there was nothing to indicate he was more qualified than anyone else. they got a hamburger and a video clip of themselves shooting a machine gun, not schooling.

The parents should have known better and the people running the show got careless and complacent. They even lost the waivers the parents signed. they let them blow away. A dead man, a widow, orphans and a child carrying the weight of all that for the want of some common sense.

 

I don't know what the 'instructor's' qualifications were, other than he was hired as one, or was acting as one. There are no real set qualifications for instructors. I know some NRA 'instructors' that I will no longer shoot with because of poor muzzle control.

Many don't see police experience as a plus for civilian training, as police use different tactics than most civilians. But all in all, was one messed up situation.

 

I'm not sure what is meant by "different tactics" in this context. I have both military and police training in firearms, and I can say that safety considerations are pretty much universal when talking about training to safely operate, clean, secure, and store a weapon and its ammunition.

Now, law enforcement officers (and certainly the armed forces) routinely find themselves in situations that civilians never will; but I don't understand, lets say, how a police officer is trained to react to an active shooter situation relates to general weapon safety training considerations at all. It has been a long day and I might just be missing the distinction, I admit.

If I had to pick between a trained civilian with a gun, or a retired beat cop or a military vet, I'm picking the cop or the vet (or Fred, if he's around :-D)

 

Honestly, I'm not sure how many different tactics there are to keep from accidentally shooting someone or something, but I can't imagine that they're that much different depending on training.

 

The LEO and military run towards the gun fire, as a civilian, I stay away from it if possible. Military may use suppressive fire. Try that on in court. Just saying, that just because they have a NRA cert (I am a NRA member) or military or LEO experience, might not be the best instructor for a civilian. And I am going beyond basic gun safety and such, which most of the LEO and military would most likely be great at.

I have great respect for military and LEO. Civilian and LEO or military training is just different in many ways. As it should be in our Republic.

 

Well, I was thinking of the issue in the context of this thread as a purely safety training discussion involving civilian use of firearms.

Civilians will of course receive different training instruction in the laws governing the use of their weapons. A main point of any civilian training I have been involved in is it's best not to use the weapon at all . . . if you can extricate those you seek to protect from a bad situation, then this is the best course of action. But if an armed response cannot be avoided, they are trained what the law allows them to do when using deadly force. I can't imagine a scenario where a police officer or military vet training civilians in the legal and safe use of a firearm would include offensive military or police tactics as part of the curriculum.

I have no doubt you do, sir, nor was it my intention to make it appear I thought otherwise. I consider that beyond any question.