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The Poor Kid Will Be Scarred for Life': Blaze Readers Respond to Footage Showing Seconds Before 9-Year-Old Girl Accidentally Kills Shooting Instructor With Uzi
Image source: YouTube

The Poor Kid Will Be Scarred for Life': Blaze Readers Respond to Footage Showing Seconds Before 9-Year-Old Girl Accidentally Kills Shooting Instructor With Uzi

"They will spend the rest of their lives in a personal hell that I don’t wish on anyone."

TheBlaze posted a story earlier this week about a video showing the moments before a 9-year-old girl accidentally shot and killed her shooting instructor with an Uzi in Arizona.

Image source: YouTube Image source: YouTube

The girl lost control of the weapon and accidentally killed instructor Charles Vacca.

Here's what some readers of TheBlaze had to say about the incident:

pugsly84

This kind of irresponsibility gives us responsible gun owners a bad reputation. This child in no way should have been given that weapon to fire.

Daithi

Don’t have little kids shooting automatic weapons. This little girl will now grow up knowing she is responsible for a man’s death. A little boy, about the same age, in MA also died when firing an Uzi on automatic and ended up shooting himself in the head because of recoil.

I grew up around guns. I was 13 and shooting guns on a target-shooting team. I have two sons and two nephews who've grown up shooting guns. But use some freaking common sense. Little kids aren’t going to be able to handle the recoil of automatic weapons, so don’t have them shoot them (or you or themselves).

dpmeek71

What kind of moron let’s a 9 year old girl, or any kid under 18, shoot a fully automatic weapon? It was hard for me a control a M16-A1 on fully auto as a fit soldier at 18. Honestly, it’s idiots like this that get people killed. The parents need their heads checked as well. Unfortunately, they will spend the rest of their lives in a personal hell that I don’t wish on anyone.

Deathtodems

That is a Mini Uzi, not a standard Uzi. The standard Uzi has almost no recoil and is substantially heavier; a mini Uzi has substantial ‘walk’ because it is lightweight and shoots at over twice the rate a standard Uzi does. I own both and have let my own kids shoot the full size, but I never let them shoot the Mini. I weigh 235 lbs and it takes my weight to hold it on target and not walk.

paulwbrown

Really foolish thing to do with a small, inexperienced shooter. Fortunately only the person directly responsible for the tragedy was the one killed, although the poor little girl will be traumatized and affected for the rest of her life. We don’t know what role her parents played in the decision and what they were told by the instructor about the wisdom of allowing her to fire on full auto.

redfish53

My two sons were started off on a 22 LR and then up thru the shotgun gauges. They are in their 20s now, and I doubt they've shot automatic weapons yet. The saddest thing besides this poor man’s lapse in judgement is that this sweet little girl will live with this for the rest of her life.

Bluedog78

Predictable is preventable. This already happened a couple years ago in Massachusetts with an 8-year-old. When I went to the Front Sight Uzi course a few years ago we had an entire day of instruction before we got to shoot on full auto. This girl got about 10 seconds worth of instruction. Kids are capable of being happy and healthy without being introduced to machine guns at such a tender age. Her parents probably thought it would be a “cute” facebook post. What a shame.

SoonerMD

Should have been a "no" said several times. From her posture to her grasp of the weapon, she was ill-prepared for a revolver much less a semi-auto. Few people (including gun enthusiasts) need to handle a full-auto hand-based gun. It’s a totally different animal. Sad that she was exposed to that folly! May God bless those involved.

Swimming-with-the-Sharks

Too many disasters occur when a novice pulls the trigger for the first time (automatic or semi). As the gun recoils they usually still have the trigger pressed. Even a semi-automatic weapon can accidentally fire multiple rounds.

This is why I will only put one round in the gun when teaching somebody to shoot (especially a minor). I feel bad for the little girl. She will carry this all her life. I feel bad for the instructor also, but it was all his fault.

Hopefully people will learn from this.

Johnny916

Sadly accidents do happen. Personally I don’t think young children should use weapons they cannot control properly. This is a good example that a better-suited gun should have been used instead.

1justsaying

Oh my gracious!!!! Really??? I have been shooting weapons my entire life and have never been around a freaking fully automatic Uzi. What the heck were the parents/instructor thinking to put that in a 9-year-old's hands? Just when it seems that this country is making some headway to ease restrictions on guns more and more...

There’s always someone who shows something stupid like this, and now the libs are just going to use this crap for more “anti-gun” propaganda, to push for more gun restrictions! Nice thinking people. I feel so bad for that little girl; she may never get to really have fun with, or feel comfortable around guns ever again in her life.

isgau8

We had a similar incident at a range near my home about 10 years ago. Except in that case, the boy shooting the automatic was killed when the gun (predictably) walked the muzzle into his head. Letting a child shoot an automatic weapon was stupid then, too. Not only is the instructor dead, this little girl, through no fault of her own, is going to carry around this emotional scar for the rest of her life. Let us hope that she's able to deal with it. I am an avid gun owner and shooter and it infuriates me how stupid some fellow gun owners can be. If you are teaching a youngster how to shoot, perhaps caution should be applied when you think, "Hey kid, want to see something really cool?"

blamb61

You never let kids shoot a pistol unless you have your hands on theirs! I’ve taken my kids and scouts shooting many times, and that is my rule. Kids don’t have the awareness of where they are pointing things. In this case, she didn’t have the strength to control the automatic weapon. You have to be extremely careful and controlled even with long rifles/shotguns with kids because they will point them at you when they turn to talk to you. With a long rifle or shotgun, you have to have an adult right behind them to make sure they don’t swing it around if a line and a shooting table are not being used. You only give them ONE bullet at a time. Letting a child like this shoot an UZI is insane! I’m sorry for the instructor; he didn’t think about the girl not having the strength to control it. The instructor should have been behind her with his arms wrapped around her and his hands over hers. Never let someone shoot an automatic weapon who doesn’t have the strength to control it. Feel so sorry for the girl and her family. Not the girl's fault!

pa_native

I am a gun guy, hunter, outdoorsman and a Lifetime NRA member.

This was a completely insane idea to have such a young kid firing a fully automatic weapon.

My kids started out with single-shot bolt-action 22 rifles under 100% supervision until they learned SAFETY first. ONLY when they were mature enough (several years later) did I teach them other weapons. Larger cal. rifles first (not even semi-auto), 410/20 gauge double barrel shotguns for their first hunting years.

The instructor was an idiot…but the poor kid will be scarred for life.

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