The opening sentence of the article in USA Today says it all:
An 8-year-old boy died after accidentally shooting himself in the head while firing an Uzi submachine gun under adult supervision at a gun fair.
This is insane on so many levels. Nearly every word of that sentence is just wrong…. a veritable countdown of wrongness… want to know what I really think???
8 year old boy: great. We love eight year old boys. Spent much of last night running around with one at the National Zoo. Great things, eight year old boys.
8 year old boy + gun fair: not so great, but I’ll grant you, some Americans believe its our Constitutional right to bear arms. Not our right to bare arms, or our right to arm bears. People with weapons. I’ll live with it, but I don’t have to like it.
8 year old boy + gun fair + UZI SUBMACHINE GUN: Now is where I say, leave the kids at home and go play with deadly weapons on grown up time. WTF? Why on earth does any child need to look at an UZI? Let alone touch one. Let alone…
8 year old boy + gun fair+ fires UZI… under adult supervision. I’ve got only one question: WHY? WHY? WHY?
The Uzi is not a finesse weapon. You wouldn’t hunt deer or turkey with an Uzi semiautomatic machine gun. The things are capable of firing up to 600 rounds per minute. Not much turkey left to put on the Thanksgiving table when an Uzi gets through with it — and the weapons aren’t known for their pinpoint accuracy. I don’t know how much force the gun kicks out when fired but again I ask… why? Why on earth is an eight year old firing a weapon whose sole purpose is to kill other human beings?
And for an eight year old, at a gun fair, shooting an Uzi, to die shooting himself in the head while under adult supervision? We’ve lost our minds, people. We have completely. lost. our. minds. My five year old would have no doubt in his mind that he could shoot that gun, that it would be fun, and that no harm could come of it. I wonder if that eight year old believed the same?? And now he’s gone. He’s dead. He will never plan another Halloween costume or TP his neighbor’s trees, because some adult with less than perfect judgment thought it would be ok to let a child shoot a semiautomatic MACHINE GUN. Don’t we have enough problems with children the world over losing their innocence too young, and being forced into violence and soldiery? Must we play at it, too? Must we?
I’m going to bed. It’s hard enough to birth a child and raise him or her right, with all this going around messing with this sort of stuff. This single mother is tired of the way we’re behaving. Where is my mind?
Ugh, it just enrages me that this kid died from gross negligence on the part of so many different people. Did his parents know he was going to be shooting Uzis at this gun show? Did the guy at the Uzi display even think for a SECOND that it might be a bad idea?
Here’s another question. WHY THE HECK WERE THERE BULLETS IN THE GUN? If an 8 year old wants to look at/touch the gun at a gun show, okay fine. Why was it loaded? I honestly cannot imagine any circumstance in which a CHILD would be handed a loaded gun.
So frustrating.
This happened in the next town over from me. I couldn’t believe it. It reminds me of how, even people who live close by, are so incredibly different from me. The laws governing gun shows are generally too loose, but I had no idea they involved allowing children to handle and even SHOOT a gun!
The part that boggles my mind the most? The boy’s father is an ER doc. Has he not seen the kind of damage guns can do? Why on earth he’d want his child around them is beyond me.
[...] A discussion in IM with solomother reminded me of the death of Christopher Bizilj: [...]
You know what, I am absolutely shocked that something like this could happen.
I mean, the boy’s only 8, and that weapon was definitely a deadly weapon (like, literally!). If I had a kid, I wouldn’t even let him or her touch the thing, even under adult supervision. And was the supervision even effective? Because obviously the boy was not warned about the force that kicks out once the thing was fired. They should have thought through the situation better, being professionals, that the poor boy is only. Eight. Years. Old. They could just look at his size and tell; the gun was probably bigger than his arm! They could have held it for him, or something. I think laws should be enforced that children have to be of a certain age before they are allowed to access these deadly weapons.
Actually there could’ve been worse situations. What if some madman comes up and suddenly grabs the gun and fires it at the crowd? And no, from the fact that the conductors of the show could not even protect the boy, I don’t think that they could stop such a situation either. They are very unprofessional.
There’s so many things to say, to argue about, to want to change, but at the end of the day, I bet they won’t do anything much about it. And so I will not say anything more.