8-year-old's Uzi death at gun show

[TheFacelessOne]

Welcome to America, where it is NEVER your fault!

All of the people involved should get jailtime. They were all at fault.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Well hey... At least he went out like a badass...

Shooting himself in the head...

Damn...

You trolls... -_-

Which is more defective: The Uzi or the kid's family?

Everyone.

You never give guns to kids aged 16 and less. Ever. The 15-year-old "instructor" deserves jailtime because, let's face it, he probably wasn't even licensed to handle firearms. The 8-year-old was asking to get shot in the head, man-handling the UZI as he was. His family, with only their own stupidity to thank, lost their son.

 

[Rifty]

Remember, controlled does not imply that all free variables have been accounted for (indeed, this is impossible due to quantum randomness), merely that all relevant are accounted for.

Don't come back with "quantum randomness", this is about common sense.
Just because other things can go wrong is no reason to place our kids in unnecessary risks.

The risk wasn't unnecessary by any measure.
The risk of driving in a car to GET to the gun show was FAR higher than this situation, due to the ABUNDANCE of free variables in the uncontrolled car environment (along with its inherent risks) compared to the controlled environments very restricted free variable set.

At what point did common sense abandon your line of thought? This comparison is a joke. Yes, people die from car accidents, but cars are designed to be a mode of transportation, not a tool with which to damage or kill other living beings.
And don't give me the 'guns are a tool for defending yourself' argument, because it is rendered moot by my previous point: guns help you achieve self-defense by damaging or killing.
You can cite laws or spout crap about free variables as much as you like, but the fact remains that the only controlled environment in this already bizarre setting would have been one in which the kid had not been given the damn uzi, because a gun (loaded or not) does NOT belong in the hands of a child!

Common sense was never part of it; pure logic was.

Tools are tools, and when the inherent risk of using them is controlled by say, a lack of free variables in say, a controlled environment, then there is no reason one would be in any way worse than another.

And where has common sense, exactly, supported YOUR argument?
You have begged the question at every turn without answering it.

Why is a gun inherently "wrong" to be in the hands of a child, in a controlled environment?

The quick answer is, there is no inherent wrongness in showing a child any tool or allowing a child to use a tool in a controlled manner. What that tool is designed to do is irrelevant; that it is a tool, and can be used productively, is.

If it was a controlled environment why was a child that was unable to hold the gun properly by himself allowed to fire the gun? A controlled environment would have had someone like the instructor holding the gun with him to keep it steady. That would have been controlled.

 

[Woem]

Again, according to child psychology, an eight year old can fully understand the consequences to potentially the same degree as the 15 year old (many 15 year olds are still in the concrete stage). Which sort of undermines your argument.

Not to mention, it was a controlled environment. You could have had a 2 year old shoot it with the same amount of risk as an 80 year old.

No, you absolutely couldn't, because a two-year old isn't strong enough to carry the weight of the weapon, let alone control the recoil. As this case so readily demonstrates, a eight-year old wasn't capable of controlling it either.

Sure a 2 year old is, with proper help.

what kind of help, a cyborg body? you're either a troll or certifiably insane.

PS if i get banned there is no freedom of speech. To many have died to protect it. So deal with it.

Welcome to the Escapist. Come back when you learn what freedom of speech means.

...how about someone supporting his arms, like any instructor is supposed to do ANYWAY?
As an instructor for far heavier firearms than a mere machine pistol, this is how we teach everyone from 5 to 55 how to shoot, because it works on EVERYONE.

Well it is a Micro Uzi so perhaps everyone thought he would manage. Which he didn't.

 

[Numb1lp]

Yeah, but now we get to blame everyone in a lawsuit. That is so the right thing to do.

 

[Ben Legend]

Somehow.... somewhere.... someone will blame games.

But who the hell lets a kid hold a gun? Let alone try and pull the trigger?

 

[atomicmrpelly]

Driving a car is much more dangerous than using a handgun

A pointed stick could just as easily have kill the poor child.

Right, right, right...

 

[Woem]

Well hey... At least he went out like a badass...

Shooting himself in the head...

Damn...

You trolls... -_-

Which is more defective: The Uzi or the kid's family?

Everyone.

You never give guns to kids aged 16 and less. Ever. The 15-year-old "instructor" deserves jailtime because, let's face it, he probably wasn't even licensed to handle firearms. The 8-year-old was asking to get shot in the head, man-handling the UZI as he was. His family, with only their own stupidity to thank, lost their son.

He was licensed. You can get a license at 13 - 10 in some places.

It does appear so. Here is a photo of the teen instructor at age 12. Not kidding. Do note how these heavy guns are mounted.

"Domenico Spano, front, of New Milford, Conn., and his son, Michael Spano, then
12, load a machine gun at the Westfield Sportsman's Club in October 2005."

 

[Comma-Kazie]

Hmm, yes let's allow an 8-year-old to fool around with a fully automatic submachinegun loaded with live rounds--what about that could possibly seem like a bad idea?

 

[Outlaw Torn]

"The boy's family claims the gun was defective and unreasonably dangerous"

Unreasonably dangerous? Because you'd expect an Uzi to sneeze at you instead of turn your head into swiss cheese.

 

[Liverandbacon]

Yet the Americans are still so firm about defending their right to bear arms, you never seem to hear about guns saving people just constant tragic accidents and attacks with them.

You do know my country's obsession with guns is a result of a supreme court bastardization of a constitutional right for MILITIAS to bear arms. Damn Republican judges had to change it to the individual's stupid, stupid right

sorry, that sounded a bit condescending. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that our modern interpretation of the second amendment wasn't at all what the founding fathers had in mind

OK, I'm not even a gun owner, but saying the founding fathers didn't want individual citizens to be armed is just false (who do you think is in the militia?). A few examples:
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
--Thomas Jefferson

"Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"
-- Patrick Henry

"To disarm the people (is) the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
-- George Mason

"A free people ought to be armed."
--George Washington

"I ask you sir, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people."
--George Mason


Now whether the founding fathers were right or not is a different question, but claiming that they didn't want individuals to be armed is just untrue. Personally, I feel that a kid up to the age of 18 should only handle a gun at a firing range under parental supervision, but I don't advocate legislating that. Instead, I think we should encourage parental responsibility. Parents should just think more about whether their child is mentally mature enough to handle a gun safely.

 

[skywalkerlion]

Yet the Americans are still so firm about defending their right to bear arms, you never seem to hear about guns saving people just constant tragic accidents and attacks with them.

You know, I'd rather die with a bullet in me then getting stabbed/beaten to death with a blunt object (Since if we were to ban Firearms we'd all be getting killed in incredibly brutal manners). Thus why I defend me gun.

Anyway, this story cries RETARDED, because the family's level of failing can not be matched with any tragedy I've seen in recent history.

 

[MrSnugglesworth]

You're being to hard on the parents. They just lost their son at a Gun Show. They're looking to blame the first person who could be held responsible besides themselves. Now this is the wrong way to do it. Blaming yourself and getting over it will help you get past many of lifes problems. Alas, they are but grieving parents.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

But... it doesn't make any sense...

That just seems like a series of bad decisions... Honestly, who couldn't have seen something wrong with this?

And about the gun laws thing, I stand by my idea that if you make guns illegal, then it will just open up the door for criminals because they know that no one can defend themselves...