This story is a genuine tragedy, but it also must be filed under WTF was this guy thinking?
A 9-year-old girl from New Jersey accidentally shot and killed her instructor with an Uzi submachine gun while he stood to her side, trying to guide her. A video of the shooting, which her parents recorded by 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 the cellphone video over 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.
The Times has the video, if you want to watch, and the 9-year-old girl is quite small, as one would expect. I assume the weapons instructor could have refused to allow the child to fire an Uzi, although the article said that the parents were knowledgeable about guns. Anyone with any knowledge of firearms ought to have realized that the recoil on an automatic submachine gun would have been too much recoil for a 9-year-old girl to control.
In the video, the girl, whose name has not been released, positioned herself before the target at an outdoor shooting range in this outpost in the Mojave Desert — one leg in front of the other, torso turned to the left, hands clutched around the grip of the Uzi, which appeared compact and light enough for her age and small build. When the girl fired her first shot, a puff of dust rose as the bullet hit the knoll behind the target. Mr. Vacca let out a celebratory “all right,†and then shifted the gun to fully automatic mode. She again pulled the trigger, but could not hold the gun straight as bullets came flying out at a rate of 600 rounds per minute.
A man is dead, and that poor child has to live with that memory.
News flash: 9-year-old girls are not famous for their upper body strength. I remember probably being about 12 and at Girl Scout camp, and being taught to shoot a .22 caliber rifle, which I guess is about as tame as rifles get. Even then we girls were all taught to shoot in a supported prone position so that we we were not trying to bear all the weight of the rifle and control the recoil at the same time. And it wasn’t that hard, but it was a flippin’ .22. And we took turns firing just one round.
The thing is, gun “enthusiasts” are always trying to say they know what they are doing around firearms and we should trust them, but then something like this happens. And then they wonder why we’re so nervous about seeing men with assault weapons standing in line for fast food. Because time and time again we see that at least some of these guys don’t have the sense to put the sock on before the shoe. Seriously.