From an
Associated Press report:
Boy, 8, shoots himself to death at Mass. gun show.
WESTFIELD, Mass. (AP) — With an instructor watching, an 8-year-old boy at a gun fair aimed an Uzi at a pumpkin and pulled the trigger as his dad reached for a camera.
It was his first time shooting a fully automatic machine gun, and the recoil of the weapon was too much for him. He lost control and fatally shooting himself in the head.
I'm mostly interested in the comment further down in the press release.
"This accident was truly a mystery to me," said Bizilj, director of emergency medicine at Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford, Conn. "This is a horrible event, a horrible travesty, and I really don't know why it happened."
Canadian Cynic says exactly what we all must be thinking.
Yeah, it's a puzzler, all right. A real stumper. Children and fully automatic weapons -- what could possibly go wrong?
This is why I love
Canadian Cynic!
From an Associated Press report: Boy, 8, shoots himself to death at Mass. gun show.
5 comments :
It beggars belief that anyone - especially someone who is allegedly a "firearms instructor" - could give any loaded firearm, let alone a fully automatic weapon, to an 8 year-old child.
I've seen a TV show where a father takes a young boy - maybe a little older than eight - hunting with a high-powered rifle. The boy obviously enjoyed it and nothing untoward happened but I still think that was grossly irresponsible.
Sure as hell kids and guns don't mix. But I for one can't believe the description of what happened. The recoil was too much and he shoot himself in the head? Consider:
Bullet speed no matter what would not be less than 250 m/s. To shoot himself in the head, the barrel would not be longer than 0.5 m. That's 2 ms for the gun to rotate minimum 90 degres. Which means the end of the gun would have to travel with the speed 2*3.14*0.5/4/0.002=392.5 m/s - faster than the bullet's speed. Hmmm.
Ah, I see now how that was possible - it was AUTOMATIC. Many rounds fired...
Wow, the kid's dad is a director of emergency medicine. Epic fail.
I agree with Ian; how could a fire-arms instructor not see this coming? People who have not used weapons before are surprised by the recoil, and a child would find it that much more surprising and harder to compensate for.
This must be like the DEA officer who shot himself in the foot while giving a lecture on gun safety to a high school class...
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