Guns and kids.

Referring to a recent case in Mass.

A father brings his ten year old and eight year old sons to a shooting range where a promoter is demonstrating an UZI machine gun. With help, the ten year old boy shoots the gun with no problem.

Eight year old son asks his dad if it was his turn and dad tells promoter/Gun owner that his son was responsible enough and the promoter agrees and lets eight year old boy fire gun.

When the boy fires gun, the kick back causes boy to loose control of the gun ends up killing the boy.

My questions are:

1 Should anyone be charged with the boy's death?

2 If so who? The father because he insisted that his son could handle the gun? The promoter/owner of the gun because he has the ultimate say as to can use it?
Both because they are the adults and should know better?

3. Even though ten year old didn't get hurt, should he have been allowed to shoot the gun?

People don't seem to have much common sense. I guess it's not as common as one might expect.

I have a close friend who is a pistol expert-- a grand master in practical combat pistol. He taught me to shoot automatic pistols years ago. Before letting me fire one he was thorough in his explanation of how the guns worked, single action vs double action etc. He knew that I knew the long gun rules but reviewed all gun rules anyway. We began with dry firing to examine my natural flinch and practice a smooth trigger pull. When we moved to live fire, he loaded only one .22 round in the clip so that if the recoil startled me, or exceeded by strength, a reflex pull of the trigger would not discharge additional and stray rounds. We practiced that way many times so that he could observe my behavior and be certain that I understood how to work the gun. Only after that did we move to larger calibers and add more ammunition to the clip. He exercised considerable caution with me for our safety. I was a thirty three year old adult at the time, experienced with rifles since my teens.

To say that these educated professional men (a police chief and a medical doctor) were negligent in the supervision of this child would be much too kind. They are idiots on top of being fools, on top of being morons, on top of being nimrods, on top of being brain dead numbskulls. They are personally liable and responsible for his death. They are both criminally negligent. There need not be a law preventing the use of an uzi by an 8 or 10 year old. There is only a need for good judgment on the part of adults and strict punishment for those who fail to exercise it.

I am not perfect. I have done some foolish and stupid things in my adult life. I hope and pray I am never the same fool that these men were. If they have any conscience at all, they will suffer every day of the rest of their lives no matter the severity of their punishment. There is no equitable remedy for the boy's death that can be had on this earth. It is an epic tragedy.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/01/0 ... -boys.html

I would agree the kid never should of had this weapon in his hands but that is my personal opinion.

I don't think it's the governments job to decide whether a parent is going to allow their children to shoot weapons in a legal manner.

beemerboy wrote:Referring to a recent case in Mass.

Do you have a link to this story?

My opinion also--my father had me at an NRA shooting range when I was around 8 yrs old--it was a cub/boy scout outing--we did not get to handle any weapons for the first outing at all--just went over safety issues--our second outing was when we had the opportunity to actually handle & fire A 22 Winchester pump rifle with an adult right there with us--these adults in this situation were schmucks(hmmmm,Native American speaking Yiddish) & should both have their asses beat severely

Richard S. wrote:I would agree the kid never should of had this weapon in his hands but that is my personal opinion.

I don't think it's the governments job to decide whether a parent is going to allow their children to shoot weapons in a legal manner.

I agree that its not the governments job in a case like this or for that matter most other laws but unfortunately you can`t make being stupid unlawful so there for the need for most laws. Its a real shame that supposedly intelligent people would not think of what could & in this case did happen, some things are just so dumb it makes me wonder how the world has gotten this far.

Absolutley NOT!!! Neither of those boys should have had THAT gun in their hands... An automatic firearm, 8yrs. old and 10yrs. old... No common sense whatsoever on part of both father and demonstrator, ADULTS... It is most every young boys wish to shoot a gun of sorts, kind of just a 'built in' curiosity, it is the responsibility of the parents and or any adult to be sure that their child/children does/do not engage in activities that pose such a risk... We as adults are said to be 'parents to all children' wheather or not we are even a parent at all and that is where I feel that the demonstrator is of equal guilt... Lets face it, were either of those two children going to 'purchase' that weapon??? Bust out their lunch money and begin to haggle a bargain basement price for this piece of artillary??? GUILTY AS CHARGED!!!

I am an advocate of owning firearms and own many pieces myself as well as hold a concealed carry permit, and I do carry at times... I also am an advocate of teaching proper firearm handling safety to children and have nothing against children shooting firearms under close supervision of a responsible parent... I remember the day my father first allowed me to shoot a gun and that is a moment that every boy should have access to in their childhood, but, of much greater importance is the use of better judgement on part of the parent to make sure that allowing your child to fire a gun is a wise choice to begin with... Perhaps a 410GA single shot or a 22Cal 'short', a freakin' Uzi??? Cmon!!!

Book em' Dan-O!!!

Murdoc

Full auto at 8 or 10... maybe if it were supported and strapped to a fixed stand or something, but not a gun that has to be controlled and supported by the shooter.

Should anyone be charged in the death? No. The father made the decision to allow it and was present. He made a monumentally stupid decision, one he most likely is destroyed over. Ripping this person away from his remaining family makes no sense. This is one of those circumstances where the person responsible is likely punishing themselves far more than the state ever could.

Promoter shouldn't be charged either. While his judgement is questionable, the father was the one ultimately responsible for the child's wellbeing here and he bears the brunt of the responsibility. If anything this promoter should find a different line of work and hopefully no one will be wanting his services anymore.

On the general matter of children shooting firearms. Only under direct adult supervision. Single shot, low power rifles are fine. In fact they are a great way to get introduced to the shooting sports as they are great teaching platforms and they tend to be fairly accurate and easy to shoot, great for a young, first time shooter. Probably no problem with low power pistol shooting too (again under stringent direct supervision). Also agree that significant up front time has to be spent on safety. If the child in question doesn't appear to have a measure of fear/respect for the situation of firing the gun then they should not be handling it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40955360/ns/local_news-boston_ma/
Just do a search for MA Uzi trial...
Looks like the Judge is going to let the video out to the media...
Should be on YouTube soon...

Some of those little 8 and 10 year olds overseas had no trouble at all with full autos. AK's, 16s, whatever. Our government has no qualms giving young children any weapon at all as long as they're not in the US.

The only person to blame is the father. How the hell is the police chief responsible for that??? The father gave permission!!

I will say that if that was my kid, I'd have loaded 2 rounds in the clip ..... then 3 ... then 4 ... to get him used to the recoil, & the tendency for the muzzle to climb. The kid panicked & held the trigger, resulting in a tragic accident.

This is no different than letting a kid ride a dirtbike for the first time. When I was 12, I let my buddy ride my BW80. I didn't even think that someone couldn't figure it out, as it was so obviously easy ... to me. He got on, hit the throttle, panicked, and went full throttle into the side of a house without touching the brakes. His inexperience kept him from a simple roll off the throttle. Same exact situation here with the trigger.

I let my wife shoot my 1911-A1 in .45 ACP, using my lead handloads at 7 grains of powder. I always forget how long I've been doing this ... so I forget to tell her the obvious. After she pulled the trigger, she nearly hit herself in the face with the gun. Had that been fully automatic, my wife would be dead .... and it would have been MY fault for being complacent.

Same deal when I bought her a '84 Honda XL350R. To me, it seemed the perfect bike to learn on. Not too much power ... not incredibly fast ... by my standards. She dumped the clutch & rode a wheelie for a good 30 feet, before thankfully flipping over backwards before running into the side of a house, like my buddy did.

This taught me a valuable lesson! Just because I know how to do something, doesn't mean the rest of the world does. This is a lesson that father should have learned ...

Situations like this suck for the rest of us .... because now, the biased media will use this as an "example" of how ALL guns are "dangerous", without regard to whether or not they're full-auto or not. How many on this board can legally buy a fully automatic weapon??? I rest my case.

I think both the parent and the police chief bares equal responsibility the father used poor judgment for putting the gun in the kids hands. The Police Chief as owner of the weapon should have set the rules of the shoot and been able to to tell the father "No I will not allow an eight year old to shoot the gun" Basically, "It's my toy and I can say who plays with it".

If an eight year old kid asked me if he could drive my motorcycle on the interstate and the father gave permission, am I still liable when he crashes and gets hurt?

It's incredibly tragic all around. I don't know what the father's experience with guns is. You don't know what you don't know so I can understand if he didn't realize how an Uzi operates. And the older boy had just fired it successfully so why would he necessarily question it?

But the police chief really OUGHT to have said "not a good idea" but then again, he wasn't really supervising things. There was a 15 year old boy acting as "range master".

I've been on a couple ranges where I thought the range masters were being a bit draconian but clearly it's a "better safe than sorry" situation.

This is very unfortunate. Zero common sense from the father, the Police Chief and the Range officer.
To let any child fire a Class III weapon makes no sense at all............
The older boy, 11 years old, fired a large UZI carbine.

Then they let the 8 year old child fire the UZI Pistol.

An important detail I did not know about. That changes my stance on this somewhat. Even in 9mm, at full-auto that thing is going to be a bit of a handful for an experienced shooter who has never fired a full-auto weapon before. Not sure I'd hand that to any kid. I was under the impression that this was the same carbine the 11 year old shot ...