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1101 East Pike St. Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98122
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I keep noticing that the militia isn't regulated very well.
I hope the girl was kept relatively ignorant of his injuries/death. Knowing you killed an adult when you're NINE? That poor kid, jesus.
An Uzi shoots .22's right? Why all the recoil?
I've shot a .44 Russian-made rifle and that thing had a real kick (shoulder hurts when I think about it).
Here is a .22 Uzi being fired by an adult (skip to around the middle): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExHZfjDg…
That's kicking around in a firm grip of someone who fires guns all the time. Imagine what a small kid still in grade school is feeling.
#16
Kid shoots Uzi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9JaaB1O…
Now, he did use the shoulder rest attachment.
Her parents thought this was a good idea? The instructor thought this was a good idea? Nobody at the gun range thought to stop this? Have they all lost their fucking minds?
I'm not quite as vehemently anti-gun as some Sloggers. I was in the military, a marksman, and have owned guns myself in the past. I even used to plink targets with a little .22 rifle when was a boy scout a few years older than this (maybe 13 or 14). But I would never, ever, even for a second, consider putting an uzi in the hands of a 9-year-old. Boy or girl. Than's insane.
Is it bad that I am much more concerned for the child living with the consequences than the instructor losing his life?
As a bouns, that little girl will now grow up with videos of herself seconds before killing some moron with an uzi all over the internet. Very therapeutic, I'm sure. Yay for technology.
Of course, I won't read your ill-conceived response, so just don't.
@ 27, thank you.
* I understand that "automatic weapons" is considered hard to define. But it's still the compound word used in these debates, and the Uzi fits the popular definition of the term, if not the technical one.
how about the state of Arizona for allowing this in the first place
Kid discussing and demoing 9mm Uzi on full-auto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03duJnMU…
Even younger kid discussing and demoing 9mm Uzi on full-auto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjHT9NW8…
Dan posted frequently.
1.) The "even younger" kid in your second video is about 13 or 14. Not 9. Big difference.
2.) The fact that one anecdotal video shows a teenager shooting an uzi without managing to kill himself or anyone around him does not make it the idea any less insane for a 9 year old.
3.) You are an idiot.
Of course, that's what should be released - so that people can watch it over and over. Folks will protest 'gratuitous violence' and 'insensitivity' but the sanitizing is prevents people from properly perceiving risk. Perhaps the risk is statistically low, but the consequences are dire.
Americuh.
Maybe I just have fellow-kitten-avatar bias in seatackled's favor.
LMFAO...Matt, you are clueless.
Stay inside and play video games or something.
Sarcasm fail.
(Come on, seriously? What do the words "No one could have predicted" remind you of?)
@50 Thank you for getting it!
That's still largely predicated on the parents getting her the support and help she needs. I'm not optimistic.
@30,
A compound word is a word that used to consist of two words but, through common usage, turned into one. For example, "oilfield" is becoming common enough that I suspect "oil field" is going to fall out of common usage. The words are basically interchangeable as it is.
There's probably feline telepathy at work, too. But it seemed to me that it the sarcasm would have been apparent because of all the cliches I threw in there (well, maybe just two--the Condi Rice allusion and the oft-repeated admonition against "politicizing" these things).
I mean, not to make light of it, but it's so fucked up, so what else is there to say, other than to say what everyone else is saying about how fucked up it is?
But coming at this from a different and non-ironic angle, who was the instructor? If he was an employee instead of the owner, for example, then I assume he was following gun range rules when he let the kid shoot. Is there an OSHA violation here?
I am going to see about creating a list of kitty-related Slog commenters on my profile.
After I finish playing with this ball of yarn.
@ 56, if an impartial reading can come across as sincere, then sarcasm has indeed failed.
@ 57, not quite. Compound words can remain two separate words, as in the case of "automatic weapons." The adjective has become inseparable from the noun, but because we aren't Germans (who havent met a 72-letter compound word they didn't like) we keep writing the words separately. Examples include attorney general, post office, and upper class.
There’s not much going on in that part of the US. The desert’s a moonscape. Every now and then we’d look at the local entertainment (golf; shooting ranges; judging from all the pregnant waitresses we saw, banging waitresses) and try to imagine what we might do for fun if we lived there. If it’s a choice between golf, knocking up waitresses and learning to shoot, I would conceivably choose to learn to shoot.
If I’ve got a bored and active nine-year-old in the car on a long road trip with me and the local entertainment seems to be golf, banging waitresses and learning to shoot, I can see deciding that it would be fun to let the nine-year-old learn to shoot. Especially if she sees it through the window. Mom! We can shoot machine guns! Canwe canwe canwe canwe? Especially if we’ve just spent a lot of time in Las Vegas saying NO, we are not going to spend lots of money on this and this and this very attractive attraction.
And there are a bunch of people who more or less assume that if it weren’t safe it wouldn’t be legal, especially when it comes to children’s activities.
So no, I don’t fault the parents. Not even a little.
I fault the gun range, I fault lax legislation. Because there are always going to be people who don’t know better. For instance, parents from the northeast who have never handled guns themselves and who trust the experts about what’s safe and appropriate. If certified shooting instructors are not “the experts,” then who is?
If those are the only three options, you'll find my [fictional] nine-year-old and me over there chatting up the waitresses. Golf is just an abomination.
I have to respectfully disagree. ANY parent who comes to the conclusion that firing a military-grade automatic weapon is an appropriate activity for a nine year-old child, regardless of the supposed qualifications and/or expertise of the person overseeing said activity, should not be allowed responsibility for either a child or a weapon, because they have unequivocally demonstrated a severe incapacity to make critical judgments.
Much like how everyone needs to mourn in their own way, and there is no set time period for getting over the death of a loved one, everyone needs to process a traumatic event in their own way. Ideally, with good help, and I do hope she gets some beneficial therapy and doesn't have to process this on her own. But I don't think random internet commenters trying to predict her future is helpful.
Also, as to the speculation as to how much she likely weighed, to think about the recoil effects. The age to weight chart I saw makes it likely she weighed roughly 65 pounds. 62 pounds is typical for a nine year old girl (63 for boys) and 70 pounds is typical for a ten year old boy or girl. She's probably somewhere between nine and ten. While she may not be exactly typical, without any specific info 65 pounds is a decent rough approximation if the source I used is accurate. People with experience dealing with recoil can try to figure how much recoil they think a 65 pound person could handle.
Hell, not even remotely comparable, but my 6-year old nephew went on an alpine slide for the first time a couple weeks ago. It was not only allowed, but mandatory that he go on his own sled. We figured out pretty quickly that he didn't have the judgment/coordination/whatever to handle it by himself, so he didn't get to go again. Just because something's legal doesn't mean it's safe for every kid...
It chills me to think that some kind of misguided political statement led to this tragedy; I would prefer to think it was just stupid - like letting your kid put his head in a lion's mouth just because a trainer in a fancy red jacket says: "I do this myself all the time!"
But there are a lot of parents with a lot of different parenting styles, cultural backgrounds, perceptions of risk, trust in authority and so on. A priori a roller coaster doesn’t look very safe either, but we expect parents to suck it up and let their kids try because it’s an approved activity for children. According to Bullets ’n Burgers, learning to shoot an Uzi is safer than it looks (like a roller coaster) and is an approved activity for children (like a roller coaster).
I’m not going to come crashing down like a ton of bricks for parents on vacation, interested in participating in local customs, making the wrong call. I’m pretty sure it’s not a call I would have made. Probably only a minority of parents would make it. Probably only a tiny minority. But when you’re driving through that part of the desert, shooting ranges are along the roadsides presenting themselves as normal, appropriate recreation for families. If someone maintains an open mind and decides to do like the locals — yeah, they made the wrong call. But I’m not going to demonize them.
I do demonize the shooting range. They have no business presenting what they provide as family activities.
When it comes to these parents, my question is, Have YOU ever fired an uzi? If no, then they let their child do something in ignorance of what it's actually like. If yes, then they should have known the recoil.
I guess the point is, the rules said my nephew was ok to go by himself, and we made a judgment call that he could handle it. We coached him, and my brother went ahead of him with me immediately behind him to limit the risk from/to other riders. But still, he could have gone too fast and crashed. Afterwards we felt pretty stupid that we had let him go (he is a bit of an adrenaline junkie so... we should have known better), and were just really glad that nothing happened.
We might have been lulled a bit by the fact that he technically exceeded the height/age requirements... so I get how that might have contributed to these parents' decision. That said, a 9-year old with an Uzi just seems flat-out crazy to me.
I suppose you must be right. Surely this girl's parents didn't drag their girl into a gun range expecting her to kill someone. They must have been convinced, either by the signage, the staff, or our culture, that this was a reasonably safe activity.
But... wow. How could anyone be that stupid? Even without my knowledge of firearms. I mean, come on. Even without watching that video you can see she's just a little girl with tiny little arms. Even a rudimentary passing association with the basic notion of physics would suggest she couldn't possible control a fully automatic weapon with little twig arms like that. Gah!!!! It just boggles my mind!
If only there were a RESPONSIBLE gun owner on the scene. Then a 9-year-old never would have had the weapon to begin with.
The range (not any civil authority) is going to kook at their procedures again to make sure they're safe, but they don't expect to see any changes or make any changes. It's all working according to God's plan.
I wish I was making that up.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national…
The world is not designed for children, nor should it be. As a parent, it's my responsibility to determine which parts of the world my little one can handle, and which parts she can't. I don't give ten shits if Bambi is rated "G"-- if I think my kid will be overly traumatized by the mom's death, she's not watching it. Nor do I care what the teenager manning the roller coaster says-- if it doesn't look safe for a kid my size, she's not going on. And since wasn't asleep during high school physics, I know there's no fucking way a skinny nine-year-old can control a gun firing at full auto. So I wouldn't care what the gun range people say; my nine-year-old would not fire one.
@14: A rifle fires a heavier caliber bullet than an SMG, but an SMG (when fired "full auto" as in the video) fires many bullets in quick succession, to the tune of ten rounds per second. Really, you couldn't figure that out?
@60: Do I count?
Even before you asked. Under the bio in my profile.
@33, thanks, I needed that.
Exactly. Lots of ordinary good parents would assume that any dangerous-seeming activity promoted for children would be subject to something similar, meaning someone knowledgeable had determined that it was in fact safe.
Very different but related: I stopped in at the pharmacy on the way home and checked out the baby food. There was a very healthy-looking jar of Heinz strained blueberries in with the specially-packaged very special organic baby food. The label says “strained blueberry” in big letters and “dessert” in skinny capital letters* on a dark banner that you don’t see right away. If you turn the jar around in tiny letters the ingredients are listed: water, blueberries, corn starch, sugar, brown sugar, ascorbic acid. That is, it’s a sugary starch paste with blueberries added. I do not consider this suitable infant food and I would not feed it to a child. However, it would be completely reasonable for an ordinary good parent to assume that it was especially healthy infant food and to feel very good about feeding it to their child.
Yes it’s a parent’s job to sort through the garbage but there’s an awful lot of garbage out there to sort through. Lots of people see Uzi-firing as such an obvious case of garbage as to not need sorting. Other people might see it as a very cool, gender-stereotype-busting, empowering activity in a structured and supervised environment. They’d be wrong but I’m not going to put any energy into faulting them for it.
* remembering that all-caps is much harder to read than lowercase
@ 91, while some parents may assume things are safe, but it's different from knowing about inspection and government certification as you have with roller coasters. I still fail to perceive a logical parallel. I get your point, and I'm certain that, however they arrived at their conclusion*, they felt assured that this was safe for their daughter. And obviously the gun instructor felt that way, too.
* Since it was an uzi and not a handgun or hunting rifle, I still have to think that the parents have to fall somewhere on the gun nut spectrum. Maybe that will come out, maybe it won't.
@17, @37, @38. Now you're just fucking with us right? Are you trying to win a contest or something? Those are NOT analogous. For, like, five different reasons. Jesus.