Once again, we woke up to headlines about a shooting involving a child. This time, a nine-year-old girl, under adult supervision, was firing an uzi and accidentally shot and killed a firing range instructor.
A nine-year-old. With an uzi.
An uzi is an open-bolt, blowback-operated submachine gun invented in the 1940s and has been used as a frontline weapon by elite light infantry assault forces.
A nine-year-old is barely half of a legal adult human being, restricted by law from getting married, voting, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer or seeing a movie with too many tits in it. Their years of life experience and responsibility in anything can be measured in single digits. A typical nine-year-old can't even be relied upon to put their toys away, let alone handle an open-bolt, blowback-operated submachine gun.
There is no good reason for these two things to ever be a combination.
However, because more than one previously-presumed intelligent adults didn't think that was the case, a firearms instructor is dead and a little kid has to live with that for the rest of her life. I really hope that in the last instant before he died, that guy thought, "Yep, I totally deserve this", that he was at least capable of acknowledging bad judgment and a lack of discretion, even if only in hindsight. If that sounds harsh, I'm sorry. There's no nice way to say it; this is a stupid and senseless thing. And if your response to any of this is something along the lines of "well, that's the cost of freedom; occasionally a child might accidentally mow someone down with an Israeli assault weapon for the sake of our constitutional rights", go ahead and classify yourself as senseless and stupid too.
I'm really starting to question the existence of "responsible gun owners". These so-called "isolated incidents" (and isn't the term "isolated incidents" an oxymoron as soon as there are more than one of them?) never seem to happen... until they do. Like bombs and missiles; perfectly safe and harmless when they're just sitting there in their launch silos waiting to do what they will eventually do.
But if you're out there, "responsible gun owners", if you actually exist, can you talk to your fellow hobbyists please? They are not doing you, or anyone else for that matter, any favors. And let's be honest, okay? Can we drop the pretense and admit the truth about you and your gun collection? It's a hobby and you're a hobbyist. You're not sentinels of liberty or beacons of freedom or any other self-important, red, white and blue bullshit. You're a collector, just like I'm a collector of baseball cards. The only differences are that my right to own and bear baseball cards is not protected by the constitution and that if I mishandle my baseball cards, nobody is going to die. You don't want the government or anybody else telling you what to do? Fine. Then figure your shit out, get it together and fix it already. Try to convince some of these dumbasses to take up another hobby.
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| Incident-free since (at least) 1972 |
Not long after I began my career as a Tampa Cop I decided to bring my daughters (aged 9 and 12) to the range that T.P.D. used. To let them see, touch, and even fire a gun. They had never shown any interest in guns, but my thinking was that I would like them to get over any curiosity they might have about guns. I let them see my guns, touch them, and watch me fire them. I gave them each a chance to fire one if they wanted to. They were very naturally frightened of them, and were extremely careful with them and only did exactly what I told them to do. They understood at all times that these things could kill you, and that they were designed to do just that. My goal was entirely to satisfy that natural curiosity, so that it would be unlikely to ever be acted upon in my home, when I wasn’t there to pay attention. It worked. Guns were never my hobby, or my interest, and when I left the department, I sold all my guns to other cops. Guns really have only one purpose, and they are very effective at it. Guns have no intentions, they just work. They shoot chunks of metal at lethal velocities wherever they happen to be pointed when they are allowed to operate. Nothing “good” comes from that.
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