re: #256 sagehen

There was an incident a few years ago where a gun range that allowed anyone to go in and shoot any manner of guns that they had on hand - they rented a goddamned Uzi of some sort to a young girl - who proceeded to fire the gun and lost control - killing the instructor in the process.

But on Monday, one family’s adventure went horribly wrong. A 9-year-old girl from New Jersey accidentally shot and killed her instructor with an Uzi submachine gun while he stood to her left side, trying to guide her. A video of the shooting, which her parents recorded on a cellphone, suggests that the girl, in pink shorts and with a braided ponytail, was unable to control the gun’s recoil; the instructor, Charles Vacca, 39, was rushed to a hospital in Las Vegas, where he died Monday night.

The parents turned over the cellphone video to the sheriff’s department, which released it publicly. As they spread online and on television, the images of a small girl losing control of a powerful war weapon during a family vacation created a worldwide spectacle, prompting some commentators to castigate parents who would put a submachine gun in the hands of a child.

“What in the name of Jesus is wrong with us, Americans?” one person wrote on the TripAdvisor page for Bullets and Burgers, the tour company that brings people to Last Stop, amid other reviewers who raved about the great time they had firing guns there. “Automatic weapons as toys? And now a man is dead, for no reason, and a 9-year-old girl is scarred for life.”

The parents are to be blamed to be sure, but the gun range too - they never should have put that kind of weapon in the hands of a 9-year old. No one of any age outside the military should be using that kind of weapon. Even accidents can have deadly consequences.