Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Friday, August 29, 2014

Just another day...


in gun-stupid America.


Yes.  Gun stupid.   Because how else could one describe a culture that thinks it's cute to allow children as young as 8 years to have fun with an Uzi?

Our culture is so saturated in guns and in the belief in an unrestrained, unrestricted 2nd Amendment that we've come to accept as normal children, CHILDREN, having access to submachine guns as a wholesome and fun thing to do. 

I have yet to hear one reason from a rational person on why we allow this colossal stupidity, yet the only reaction to this gross idiocy will be to shake our heads then wait for the next stomach-turning tragedy involving children and firearms to happen again.  And, dammit, we know it will as sure as we know the NRA's thug leadership will bully our congressional leaders into doing nothing.

And speaking of the criminal leadership of the NRA, it reacted as we all knew it would with a flippant tweet just after the 9-year old girl accidentally shot and killed her instructor.  But can we actually label this sort of criminal negligence an accident?  The instructor was ex-military. He would have known the perils of a kick-back when a 60 pound child pulls the trigger on an automatic weapon such as an Uzi. We'll never know what he was thinking, because his life is over, and the poor child who shot him dead has to live with the horror of that day for the rest of her life.   I call that child abuse.


The shooting range owner and her parents, and everyone else who does not see this as insane, need to have some deep psychological counseling to help them find out why their normal human instinct to protect innocent and vulnerable children failed them.  They need to find out why their love of automatic weapons overrode what most humans would consider common sense:  i.e., not letting children near submachine guns as a form of play!

Just another day in gun-stupid America!

From Mother Jones:

How hard is it to handle one of these guns? 

Quartz's Gwynn Guilford did the math: With the average American nine-year-old girl weighing about 60 pounds, and the average Uzi weighing seven to nine pounds, "That would be roughly equal to a 40-year-old man firing a 25-pound gun like, say, the Hotchkiss M1909 used in trench warfare in World Wars I and II—a weapon so heavy it sat on a tripod." (Ironically, the Uzi is designed to be relatively light in the hands of an adult, which can also make handling its powerful recoil more tricky.)

The shooting range's manager said that the girl's parents had signed waivers and understood the range's rules. Still, he told the Associated Press, "I have regret we let this child shoot, and I have regret that [Vacca] was killed in the incident."

Has anything like this happened before and what might it mean for the national gun debate? 

Sadly, this tragedy is not the first of its kind. An eight-year-old Massachusetts boy died at a gun show in 2008, when an Uzi he was firing at pumpkins kicked back and he shot himself in the head. The former police chief who organized the show and provided the child with the weapon was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter. That incident did have one positive outcome, in Cutilletta's view: It inspired neighboring Connecticut to pass a law banning anyone under 16 from using a machine gun at a shooting range.

Demented Gun Culture

21 comments:

Paula said...

It's the yee-haw! wild west mentality we've never outgrown. And your right that this will happen again...sad.

Dave Miller said...

SIlly folks, guns don't kill people, people kill people... I guess that makes that little girl in Arizona responsible.

You can be sure any call to restrict certain guns to age appropriate people will be met with more protests that liberals are taking away rights guaranteed in the constitution.

You can also be sure that some of the loudest howls of protest will come from the very people calling to eliminate freedom of religion from the 1st Amendment and that somehow, that will be patriotic, yet gun legislation will be socialist.

Les Carpenter said...

Yeppers,just another day in the berserk world and sad saga of irresponsible parent, irresponsible rifle and firearm ranges, and the irresponsible anti sanity NRA.

A dead instructor and a 9 year old girl that will undoubtedly have psychological and or emotional scars that will last a long while.

Sad that Americans don't seem to understand the quest for money and liberty drives this insanity.

Anonymous said...

why can't we Americans agree that kids who don't even have all of their second teeth in shouldn't be playing with automatic machine guns, even with adult supervision because now we've witnessed that not all adults know what the fekk they're doing when handling these lethal weapons around kids!

Dave Miller said...

Right wing, some of us presented the facts of the situation over at Jo Joe's blog...

We're waiting to see if he retracts what are obvious falsehoods and distortions, if not outright lies...

Shaw Kenawe said...

from Andrew Sullivan's blog:

"Inside gun ranges, individuals can also “rent” a gun without any of the precautions that happen before an individual buys a gun. They don’t have to pass a criminal background check. There’s no check of their mental health records, although some require individuals to attest to their mental competence. Many gun rangesdon’t even collect names or identification. And that’s not even the worst part.

Even those gun ranges that want to check the backgrounds for rental customers are not permitted to. Stephen Fischer of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services told Politico Magazine earlier this month that individuals who rent guns don’t actually “possess” them because they don’t take them off the premises. So federal background check law doesn’t apply, and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is not permitted to conduct a check.

Many states, including Florida, take the same position that they will not conduct background checks for gun rentals."
--Nichole Flatow

Shaw Kenawe said...

Becca Morn:

"The detail that boggles me, even among the gun aficionados who acknowledge it was criminally stupid to let a 9-year-old fire an Uzi on automatic, is how many insist that children need to be taught how to handle and shoot a gun safely. I’m sorry, but as a gun owner myself, and even given the family I grew up in, this is a bs statement.Very young children do not need to be taught how to ‘handle and shoot’ guns. Their first lesson with firearms should be: “Do not touch or go near a gun. If you see a gun, find an adult because these things are dangerous.”

When a minor is old enough to qualify for a hunting license, that’s another matter. (In many states, the age is 12 years and up.) Even then, questions of physical ability and mental fitness of the kid, and appropriateness of the specific firearm need to be addressed. I remember a time when my kid brother was demoted by our father to pack-carrier, because he carelessly wouldn’t pay attention to where the barrel of his 20ga was pointed. That’s how you teach a kid to use a gun."
The Daily Dish

Ducky's here said...

Just good family fun

Their Facebook page

Ducky's here said...

From their page:

This is your lucky day!!! Philip shooting the one and only .50 cal Barrett Sniper Rifle!!!! You can skip the hardcore military training and come shoot the Barrett at Bullets & Burgers!!! No need for gun skills here...just fire at will and have a Blast!!!!

-------
How tall do you have to be to enjoy that ride? Taller than the average 9 year old?

Shaw Kenawe said...

"No need for gun skills here...just fire at will and have a Blast!!!!"

And let 9 year olds kill their instructors!!!!!


Beyond stupid. In imbecile territory.

Shaw Kenawe said...


Nation Debates Extremely Complex Issue of Children Firing Military Weapons

Anonymous said...

Maybe we should teach firearm use in schools, look how well sex education has worked keeping teenage births down.

Shaw Kenawe said...

No anon, it is the height of insanity to have children as young as 5 years old using deadly weapons. But the NRA and the stupid people who swallow their propaganda can't understand that simple idea.

I can't tell if your comment is serious or snarky, but I can tell you that the number of teenage births is declining.

Dave Miller said...

Shaw, i think the number of teenage births is the lowest it has been in over 40 years...

But we'll never hear that from some news organizations...

And others will simply deny the statistics as made up liberal claptrap...

Doctor Tomato said...







中国的一句老话“权利永远是错的。

Anonymous said...

All the training in the world won't help if the child wasn't physically capable of handling the gun. The instructor was right there telling her exactly what to do, but her physical inability to handle the gun is why the instructor is dead, and the instructor should have considered that, his deadly mistake.

Freddie and the Dreamers said...

Gun + Children = Death

Ducky's here said...

Looks like we underestimated some folks on the right. Bullets and Burgers(Love it) has announced that the minimum age for hosing the range with a full auto Uzi is now 12 years.

Don't say public opinion isn't effective.

Shaw Kenawe said...

"...minimum age for hosing the range with a full auto Uzi is now 12 years."


Well, good for them, but I still think the whole idea of a child (and a 12-year old is still a child) shooting a machine gun is stupid.

Jerry Critter said...

A 12 year old with an Uzi! Will the stupid never stop? God! They will do anything for a buck.

Shaw Kenawe said...

J.C., the criminal leadership of the NRA has duped our legislators and the American people into thinking children should have fun and be allowed to shoot machine guns.


And the American people don't see that as stupid.

Law makers are afraid of weed, but not children shooting machine guns?!

WTF?