A nine year-old girl in the US has killed her shooting instructor by accident while being shown how to use a high-powered submachine gun.
The instructor was giving the girl a lesson at a shooting range in Arizona when the recoil from the automatic fire caused her to lose control of the Uzi. Charles Vacca, 39, was shot in the head and died after being airlifted to a hospital in Las Vegas. The girl was at the shooting range with her parents, who filmed the lesson.
The footage shows the instructor coaching her as she fires a single shot at a target at the Last Stop shooting range in White Hills, Arizona. The Uzi then appears to be switched to automatic as the girl pulls the trigger and loses her grip of the weapon.
The video, edited and released by the Mojave County Sheriff's office, ends abruptly before the instructor is shot. The website of the shooting range, called Bullets and Burgers, says children aged eight and older can shoot a weapon if they are accompanied by a parent.
Range operator Sam Scarmardo told Klas TV that they had never had an incident in the 12 years it has been open. "We really don't know what happened. Our guys are trained to basically hover over people when they're shooting," he said.
"If they're shooting right-handed, we have our right-hand behind them ready to push the weapon out of the way. And if they're left-handed, the same thing." Correspondents say it is common in parts of the US for children to be taught how to use firearms.
Many firing ranges have strict safety rules on instructing children.
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Such a strange situation it is almost funny until you consider that kid will be fucked up for life now and this guy didn't make it to 40.
When I went to Vegas a few years ago I went so one of these gun ranges and I fired an MP5 and a handgun. I wasn't allowed to put the MP5 onto automatic fire and I am a lot older than nine.
I'm not going to say anyone deserved what has happened, but my son is ten and I don't let him play with matches and, funnily enough, he has never set fire to anything.
My daughter always practises after church on a Sunday behind our trailer, using some real stopping power.
Nine....nine years old, sheesh, there is no justification or excuse is there?
'Bullets and Burgers'....come on, that simply can't be true.
1. Why take a nine year-old to a shooting range?
2. If you have a nine year-old at a shooting range, why do you give her a go with the guns?
3. If you give her a go with the guns, why do you use live ammo?
4. If you use live ammo, why use an Uzi sub machine gun?
5. Is the "Range operator" demonstrating a full and complete grip on his role when he says, to a TV station, "our guys are basically trained to hover over people when they are shooting"?
6. If "many" firing ranges have strict safety rules on instructing children, what do the rest have? Slighty less strict rules?
and finally...
7. If you do film your nine year-old daughter shooting a man in the head, try to avoid allowing the movie of it reaching the world's media.
Twice.
But he was a Palace fan.
My opinion about allowing a nine year old to take part in this activity hasn't changed, at all!
I can put up with a pistol or a rifle of some sorts, if she's from a hunting family, but a bloody uzi?
Crazy.
I despair of a world that puts guns, weapons of any kind, in the hands of a child and thinks it's OK. And then, in America, of the idiots who try to defend it in any way they can to enable them to continue to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms and to force/share that right with their offspring.
Someone mentioned natural selection earlier. Right to a certain extent, but they're likely to take a lot of innocent people along with them!
I hope this child somehow gets through this experience and never has to hold/see/be involved with a gun again in her life. Little hope...sadly.