Family of Gun Instructor Slain by 9-Yr-Old Firing Uzi Files Wrongful Death Suit

OMG!

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/family-gun-instructor-slain-9-yr-old-firing-141054453--abc-news-topstories.html

Come on! Nine years old?

 

I was around 12 when I first went to the range with my dad. A few years before that when he took me out with a .22 rifle to shoot jugs of water. He always stood behind me and was so attentive that it would have been virtually impossible for me to accidentally shoot him.

I suspect this may have had more to do with insurances trying to indemnify themselves than the family trying to be jerks. Our insurance company routinely screens claims and pursues those which they feel they might be able to subrogate. So they'll pay for my dinged up knee because I fell on the ice. But if I fell on the ice outside of Steve's house they'll sue him to try to get that money back.

thats what was happening with that case where the aunt sued her niece for breaking her arm. She didn't do anything of the sort. It was insurance companies trying desperately to get the homeowners to pay out.

 

There's a reason why whenever I have someone shoot for the first time, I only load one round of ammunition in the revolver/chamber. That way, even if they do something supremely stupid like drop the gun or turn around with it, it's unloaded. Once they get comfortable with the recoil and noise, I'll load more rounds for repeating fire.

 

I think the calendar age is less important than maturity and physical ability...lot's of mistakes on this one, so many chances to do it better/safer. It really seems everyone was set up to fail.

First you have this family encouraging the kid to shoot a notoriously difficult to control pistol.

Second you have this range offering the service up as viable and safe.

Third there were no proper controls, no proper escalation of the shooting. There is a machine gun range close to me that caters to overseas tourists. They combat the issue of muzzle climb (essentially the physical culprit in the case in question) by anchoring the barrel with a short chain. The way they approach this physical safety factor actually makes the shooting of these weapons by the untrained much safer.

Finally, as Bruce mentioned, multiple rounds in a fully automatic machine pistol to start an inexperienced shooter off was the mistake of the instructor. Likewise, not having a hand on the gun and the shooter turned out to be a catastrophic failure. Kid should have been taught on a full size AR firing 22 LR and weaned from there to other platforms IMO.

Not the first time this has happened: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27399337/ns/us_news-life/t/boy-accidentally-kills-self-gun-show/ essentially the same failures, little boy shot himself in this case.

 

Muzzle climb and sweeping seem to be very common newbie mistakes. So things like the chain, if your business model is going to be allowing inexperienced people to shoot, might not be a bad idea.

The one problem I have with ranges that make shooting these guns idiot proof is that the idiot might very well wander into another range, without those precautions present, with a false sense of knowing what they are doing.

PA (public) ranged have mag limits. If I recall correctly it was either 3 or 4 rounds. It was a pain to have to keep reloading. But there were a disturbing number of people who had never handled a firearm before showing up with Uzis, AK-47s, AR-15s and MAC-10s.

You get someone who has no concept of range safety, no idea how to properly handle a firearm, no knowledge of firing range etiquette with a very powerful weapon that they bought an hour earlier because it "looked cool." Very often a Game Warden would stop by and busting those idiots for exceeding mag limits was enough to humble them. At the very least, keeping only three rounds in a mag kept them from getting into too much trouble.