Proud Dad, Laws of Physics, Uzi = Dead Son

[Stingo]

The Second Amendment strikes again. This time the dead body is an 8 year old boy firing a semi-automatic Uzi without proper supervision. The results predicted by physics proved tragically accurate, that a little boy cannot adequately control the gun’s multiple recoils. It spun in his hands, and young Christopher is dead, shot in the head.

http://allspinzone.com/wp/2008/10/28/proud-dad-laws-of-physics-uzi-dead-son/

[mwb970]

1. For me, there is no "proper supervision" when an 8-year-old is shooting a machine gun.

Things happen fast with kids. The parents were wrong to allow him to even attend such an event, much less fire off a machine gun!

[Javaman]

14. Thi is what I wrote to a friend of mine about just this...

why is an 8 year old shooting an Uzi? It’s apparent he wasn’t strong enough to handle the recoil.

It reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Kramer wants to open the “make your own pizza” store. And George says, “you can’t have people putting their arms into a pizza oven.” And Kramer replies, “it’s all supervised!!”

[Stingo]

16. Used to be

even gun nuts were about safety. Not anymore.

[Stingo]

19. This may be the most logical

comment. Keep the Uzis away from 8 year olds. The law suit that results from this may end up deciding that issue.

[Stingo]

31. Kids that young shouldn't be allowed through the door.

Clearly their parents need parenting.

[Stingo]

2. Guns Don't Kill People

The Laws of Physics Kill People

[Deep13]

3. My understanding was the gun was an actual sub-machine gun and...

...not merely a semi-automatic. The term "multiple recoils" suggests as much. I also heard the kid was in fact supervised, though one has to wonder what kind of supervisor hands an 8-year-old a sub-machinegun.

Anyway, I'm not going to blame the Constitution for individual stupidity.

[Stingo]

4. The link is there

And thanks for the clarification on the difference between semi-automatic and submachine gun. That makes this far more egregious. The article notes some information about the supervision involved. I would ban anyone under the body weight of 140 or so from participating, regardless of supervisory measures.

[Forrest Greene]

24. I Don't Wonder About That

Call me prejudiced if you like, but I'm pretty sure I have an accurate idea what kind of supervisor hands an 8-year-old a sub-machinegun.

[Stingo]

25. Agreed

That's the very first problem, letting kids get their hands on that kind of weapon, even in what they call a controlled environment.

[Deep13]

27. This kind?

[Forrest Greene]

29. Where'd You Get

...my Uncle Oliver's photo!?! Yeah, we nearly got the back deck done now.

[Caria]

5. I grew up in deer-hunting land

Back then (and I'm probably revealing my age) the NRA was seriously about safety. You had to be at least 12 to take the NRA gun safety class, and I knew lots of kids who had to take it twice (or more) before they could pass. There was a written test as well as a demonstration that you knew how to handle a rifle. The NRA class was a kid's first chance to hold any gun at all, even unloaded. NO PARENT I knew of allowed kids to handle guns anywhere else unless they had passed the NRA test.

[Stingo]

8. That was Yesterday's NRA

The crazies took over the organization long ago, as they have taken over every conservative organization in this country.

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. .........And the father can't understand how it happened

The father (a doctor) is a director of emergency services at a hospital in CT.

Hasn't he seen, first hand, the horrors of trauma, both accidental and intentional?

This guy is clearly out of his mind.

[Caria]

9. Kid had been shooting guns for 3 years

according to the article. Who gives a loaded gun to a 5 year-old??????

[Stingo]

11. Father clearly a nut

There are few cases where I would be for mandatory castration. This might very well be one.

[TheCowsCameHome]

12. A normal dad would have been carving pumpkins with his son,

not blowing the shit out of them with a machine gun.

I still can't believe this guy is actually a doctor..............

[Stingo]

15. Doctors aren't automatically

endowed with good sense.

[yardwork]

17. That surprises me too. All the ER docs I know have strong opinions about safety.

[dmallind]

7. Dumbass strikes again more like it.

You'd be amazed how many people - even how many kids - manage to exercise 2A rights without killing themselves.

Gun accidents are almost always negligence. The true accident of a gun which fails or does something it was not intended to do is incredibly rare. They happen (Glock barrel ruptures for example - although rarely fatal), but far far less often than idiots like this happen.

However he has been punished worse than anything we could legally (or sanely) do to him for his idiocy.

[Stingo]

10. Lock him up

To me that is child abuse unto death. Young Christopher is dead, and there's no reversing that.

[dmallind]

13. I have no objection to that at all.

The "he has been punished worse" bit was not in any way a plea that he should not face appropriate criminal penalties. At the very least this is a death caused by grossly negligent and reckless behavior with not a shred of concern for safety. I am not a lawyer so no idea if that is manslaughter. murder or something else entirely but I'm damned sure it's illegal somehow.

Generally speaking you'll find responsible gun owners far tougher on irresponsible ones even than gun control types. Partly because we know there is no excuse from personal experience and partly because they tar us with their brush.

All I meant was that no matter what his criminal penalties may be, this has to be a broken man from now on. I'm not even a biological parent but even I can imagine the despair of killing your own offspring because of your own idiocy. Christ I'm still torn up at times over a questionable decision which may or may not have caused my dog to contract a fatal disease four years ago, and I'm far from the most sentimental of people. This is a whole different league in both definitive culpability and harm caused, and for far less well meaning a reason.

I do not wish this nor do I take any joy from predicting it. I hope I'm wrong even, but it would not surprise me if he ends up turning a gun (or some other means - let's at least hope he loses the right to own firearms!) on himself.

[wizstars]

18. Yes, it's manslaughter. Toss in endagerment of a child for good measure n/t

[Forrest Greene]

23. I Doubt He's A Broken Man

I think his mentality is probably such that he blames the dead child for being too weak to control the firearm.

[Cronopio]

26. That is the final stage of grief for a conservative.

Find someone else (usually Clinton) to blame to keep them from having to own up to their own mistakes.

This stage is easier for them when they can get help from their enabler buddies at the local bar and grill.

[Forrest Greene]

28. Well, I'd Like To Clarify My Statement

Hello again, OmelasExpat. Not that I disagree or want to contend with you, but my original thought strikes me as being rather harsh & bitter. I feel those are appropriate reactions to this story, but I would like to outline my reasoning.

The most-used adjective I've seen regarding this is "irresponsible." It seems likely a person irresponsible enough to give a child a deadly weapon to play with would also be unwilling to accept his responsibility for his son's death. It seems likely he would start the blame with the individual supervisor employed by the event (who certainly should bear some,) move on to the event sponsors & producers, & most likely branch out to include political opponents of the doctrine of unlimited access to purpose-built deadly weapons, then other political stereotypes, then, sure, throw in Bill Clinton, & at some point, he'll no doubt blame his parents & his wife, landing finally on his own dead son.

His presumed unwillingness to bear his own responsibility might come from a self-defensive denial by his ego after its genuine realization of what it had accomplished, or it might come from the kind of fear & cowardice that feels an automatic weapon is an appropriate & proportionate tool with which to deal with the world, or it might come from the kind of plain stupidity & obvious insanity that hands a machine gun to an eight year-old, for fun.

Well, whatever. My hope is for justice for the dead child, and for society at large, in this ghastly, grotesque example of the results of armed extremism. If you don't think eight year-olds playing with Uzis is extreme, too extreme, under any circumstances, I'll just wish you luck.


(ETA an "of")

[Stingo]

30. Agreed all around

Letting an 8 year old touch an Uzi is irresponsible. Heck, showing them violent films with Uzis in them is irresponsible.

[Cronopio]

34. I didn't think I needed the sarcasm tag on my last post, but to clarify ...

... I absolutely believe that letting an eight-year-old play with an Uzi is only slightly less irresponsible than shooting the child yourself. I don't believe this sentiment is harsh or bitter, just realistic.

I was underscoring your righteous criticism of gun-huggers who regard lethal weapons as recreational toys, not disagreeing with it.

[Stingo]

35. No need to argue

I think everyone here agrees.

[Forrest Greene]

43. Oh, Not To Worry, I Got That

People can get awfully sensitive around deadly weapon issues, & I wanted to indicate that my elaborating on my prior statement was not because I had misunderstood yours, & that I was not trying, after that hypothetical misunderstanding, to pound it into your head.

[Cronopio]

46. Hmmm.

"If you don't think eight year-olds playing with Uzis is extreme, too extreme, under any circumstances, I'll just wish you luck."

If you thought that was even a possibility after reading my comment, then you misunderstood my comment. No oversensitivity required to see that.

[Forrest Greene]

49. Please Accept My Apology

I wish I had written that more clearly.

Not to analyze it into the ground, but I started off addressing you, since I was replying to your comment. I wanted to emphasize that I wasn't contending with you, because it's very easy to misunderstand things in this all-type medium, especially around emotional topics like deadly weapons, and even more so in the just-plain-wrong death of an eight year-old child.

I then tried to express my disgust & contempt for the father. I live near Ashland,CT, & have seen him interviewed on the local TV news; he is a piece of work, clearly suffering from the tragic incident, but also clearly in denial & trying cover his ass, emotionally. The latter effort seems to be the most important to him.

But you & I aren't the only ones reading this. By the time I got to that point in my post, I was thinking about the father, about the wider audience reading this, & about the many gun nuts I've seen posting here & elsewhere. (BTW, I do draw a clear distinction between someone I'd call a responsible gun user & someone I'd call a gun nut.)

By the time I wrapped up, I had gun nuts on my mind, & was expecting I might hear unhappy responses from them. It was to them, in the generic, plural, non-specific "you," that I addressed my last paragraph -- not to the specific, singular, OmelasExpat. I would indeed be surprised to find someone whose user name has the background yours has supporting the arming of children with Uzis, & that is not what I thought you meant.

I am simply not as clear or accomplished a writer as someone like, let's say, Ursula LeGuin, & so did not express myself as well as I might have.

[MadMaddie]

57. Don't the barrels rupture because the weapon is dirty ?

I saw one once when I was learning how to fire a Glock...weird shit!

[Indepatriot]

20. Dear Old Dad is guilty of Negligent Homicide.

Lock the scumbag up.

[Stingo]

45. For how long?

Seriously, he is very much guilty of negligence, but does it serve society to pick up the tab for his food and lodging? I'm thinking a huge fine and community service.

[hay rick]

52. Locking him up sends a stronger message.

A big fine is only money- and he's a doctor. Compared to incarceration, community service is a slap on the wrist. The message: gun rights = gun responsibilities.

Question: if the child was a neighbor's son and not his own, should the punishment be different?

[Stingo]

53. Good point

about the neighbor's son. The big punishment here, though, should be laws that keep kids from touching such guns, regardless of supervision.

[RedLetterRev]

21. This is wrong on so many levels

An ER doc? Hands an 8-year-old? A pretty stout automatic weapon?

If common sense didn't slow dad down, didn't med school physiology? Didn't physics class?

Where was the range supervisor? Did they even have one?

I belong to an indoor shooting range where I go target practice about once a week or so. All the lanes are visible from the front desk and there are video cameras. There are trained instructors available if anyone has any problems. There isn't any monkey business. They have a great reputation and are the preferred venue for law enforcement of all types in the area to go train.

There are safe environments and safe ways to learn to shoot. I go where I go because there's a big chance they'll weed out the idjits. I fault the range mentioned in the OP almost as much as the father -- although I realize that stooput happens quickly and supervisors can't be everywhere at once. But still; what was an 8-year-old doing in the booth with a fully automatic? Behind the booth to observe, okay. But in the booth, no. I'm a gun-owner many times over, but I don't mind some range rules. That could have been me in the next lane who the kid iced.

When I read things like this OP and similar articles posted yesterday, it grieves me for the needless loss of a life. I can't imagine the pain that family is now feeling. I feel pain and I'm hundreds and hundreds of miles away. Regardless of where or who, a young life is needlessly gone.

I want that father to look me in the eye when I ask WTF were you thinking... no, you didn't think and that was the problem. You wouldn't let a kid play with a band-saw or a chain-saw or a vehicle. You wouldn't let one smoke or drink alcohol. These are all very, very dangerous things. Why in hell would you let one play with a fully-automatic weapon? Just because you're on a range doesn't mean it's okay and you can leave your brains and all good sense at the door.

[Stingo]

22. Evidently

This was a program that let people familiarize themselves with various weapons. It was advertised as such, and there was even a smaller fee for kids. The program was run by a local Police Chief. Really, you can't make this stuff up.

By the way, your comment is fantastic.

[Joe Chi Minh]

32. Don't uzis fire about 100 rounds a second?

[Stingo]

33. Second, minute

It's still a hell of a thing to put int he hands of an 8 year old.

[Joe Chi Minh]

36. It's a phenomenal rate, and must make it more dangerous in the hands of a child.

[Recursion]

39. It's more the shape than the rate

Oddly enough, the kid would have been fine firing a .50 caliber or M240 or anything else with a stock and a tripod. Scenes from movies of a guy holding a full machinegun at his hip and firing it accurately are just that -- scenes from movies. A submachinegun is meant to be held down by a strong adult's non-firing arm to prevent muzzle climb from doing... well... this. Submachineguns are bar-none the most dangerous small arms as regards fire discipline.

[Recursion]

37. Think about that for a moment

That's not a Bag of Holding in the magazine well, it's a magazine holding about 50 rounds. It takes a lot longer than half a second of firing before you need to reload.

Still, it's not a weapon I would let an 8-year-old fire, supervised or not.

[Stingo]

38. Thanks for the education

[benEzra]

41. 10 rounds per second, for a NFA Title 2/Class III restricted Uzi. (n/t)

[benEzra]

47. Addendum---this was a Micro Uzi, so the rate of fire was 20 rounds/second,

i.e. empties the magazine in 1.5 seconds. That is another reason why the Micro is so hard to control on full auto; in terms of recoil, a 1-second burst is like rapid-firing two shells of 000 buckshot from a shotgun, if the boy held the trigger down. There is no way an 8-year-old could handle that level of recoil in such a small gun.

[Joe Chi Minh]

50. I rest my case. Such rapid fire must surely exaggerate any recoil enormously.

I see shades of this Rambo gun-loving mentality in the Americans who hanker for a retired general for President. I'm not alking about the gun-loving in the South, where apparently they have long hunted for food for the table, though doubtless there would be plenty who do have that mentality as well. Even the expression, "our Comander-in-Chief" is apparently misused.

[benEzra]

55. Er, Micro Uzi's are as tightly controlled as 105mm howitzers, and have nothing to do

with the civilian gun market. They are restricted automatic weapons, not non-automatic civilian guns.

FWIW, the South isn't the gun-friendliest area of the nation; here in NC, thanks to the legacy of Jim Crow laws, you have to go to the sheriff's office and ask for written permission from your (usually white) sheriff in order to buy a handgun, and we were one of the last states to get carry licensure reform. You want to see a truly gun-friendly state, go visit Vermont or New Hampshire, although Texas and a lot of other western and northwestern states are right up there.

Only 1 in 5 U.S. gun owners hunt, FWIW. Most of us own guns for target shooting (recreational and competitive) and defensive purposes, not hunting.

[benEzra]

40. It was a machinegun. Machineguns have been tightly controlled for 74 years

and were banned in 1986. The only ones left in non-military, non-LEO civilian hands are a handful of tightly controlled, pre-1986 collectibles. FWIW, I know of no serious attempts to repeal those restrictions?

This was egregiously irresponsible, but do not make the mistake of thinking these guns are not tightly controlled. They are as tightly controlled as 105mm howitzers and shoulder-fired rocket launchers.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wbardwel/public/nfalist/nfa_faq.txt

Police, military, and their suppliers (SOT's, i.e. manufacturers/distributors) are allowed to let someone else fire their weapons under their direct supervision (although the police and military will certainly have procedures and paperwork to follow to let somebody do that). So can licensed collectors.

I'm not sure if the owner of the Micro Uzi here was a collector or a SOT, but it was likely one or the other.

[Stingo]

42. It may have been the police chief

He was in charge of the whole shindig, according to the article.

[Stargazer09]

44. Sad, just sad

The poor kid should never have been handling that weapon, much less firing it. Heck, I have experience with semi-automatic weapons, and I wouldn't have played around with a gun like that.

I can only hope that the boy didn't suffer for very long. I know he lived for a while after the shooting, but for his sake, I hope he didn't suffer.

(Off to go hug my children and hope nothing like that ever happens to them.)

:cry:

[yellowcanine]

48. “no age limit or licenses required to shoot machine guns.” Maybe not, but what about child

endangerment laws. A police chief organized this event. He should be fired and prosecuted for child endangerment.

[Joe Chi Minh]

51. This is one of those rare cases where I feel more sorry for those concerned

than anything; which is not to say that more sensible, legal safeguards shouldn't be introduced.

[teknomanzer]

54. Guns are not toys. Gun nuts seem to have forgotten.

It could be argued that a gun is just another tool. A rifle is a tool that can be used for hunting, but the Uzi is a tool specifically designed to kill people. It has no other purpose. In this case that is exactly what it did. Now going with the tool comparison I would have to ask do you think its dangerous for an 8 year old to operate a table saw, or a circular saw, or a lathe? Any intelligent person sure as hell would not recommend that an 8 year old operate those tools because of the hazards. Why then would anyone allow an 8 year old to operate a fucking death machine? These god damned gun nuts need to get in touch with reality before reality touches them.

[MadMaddie]

56. The father is who is most disturbing in this story

<snip>
Bizilj, the medical director of the emergency department at Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford Springs, Conn., said his son was "very cautious, very well trained, and very much enjoyed firing."
<snip>

He is a director of the Emergency Department at Memorial Hospital...how many gunshot victims especially children come into his Emergency room?

The child had been handling weapons for 3-4 years? WTF?

May the child RIP!

[Stingo]

58. Yes,

You have it right, MM