Footage released of 9-year-old on firing range moments before she accidently kills instructor
- 10 years ago
Footage has been released showing a nine-year-old US girl, moments before she accidently killed her shooting instructor.
Filmed by her parents, she later lost control of the submachine gun, shooting Charles Vacca in the head.
The incident in Arizona has once again ignited a longstanding national debate about gun use and ownership.
Jim Kessler from think tank Third Way says that an Uzi should never have been in a child’s hands in the first place:
“There is no such thing as gun safety when you’re with a child. You know, they can’t handle a weapon of that lethality and that power and that weight, frankly,” he said.
But there have been many notorious shooting incidents in the US before this one. All have done little to dent what many see as an American right to bear arms, even if they’re children.
Eric Grabowski, who owns a gun store, said the instructor was to blame:
“I don’t see it being a problem that a nine-year-old girl was shooting a sub-machine gun, that’s not the problem. It really comes down to what did the instructor teach her. Did she fully understand it before picking up the firearm? And then the instructor failed by being in the wrong position.”
Recent attempts have been made to push through new legislation on gun control, spurred on by the Sandy Hook elementary massacre in late 2012. But such bills, bar minor changes to the funding of background checks, have been dismissed. The country’s gun lobby maintains that gun ownership is a fundamental US right, enshrined in the Second Amendment.
Filmed by her parents, she later lost control of the submachine gun, shooting Charles Vacca in the head.
The incident in Arizona has once again ignited a longstanding national debate about gun use and ownership.
Jim Kessler from think tank Third Way says that an Uzi should never have been in a child’s hands in the first place:
“There is no such thing as gun safety when you’re with a child. You know, they can’t handle a weapon of that lethality and that power and that weight, frankly,” he said.
But there have been many notorious shooting incidents in the US before this one. All have done little to dent what many see as an American right to bear arms, even if they’re children.
Eric Grabowski, who owns a gun store, said the instructor was to blame:
“I don’t see it being a problem that a nine-year-old girl was shooting a sub-machine gun, that’s not the problem. It really comes down to what did the instructor teach her. Did she fully understand it before picking up the firearm? And then the instructor failed by being in the wrong position.”
Recent attempts have been made to push through new legislation on gun control, spurred on by the Sandy Hook elementary massacre in late 2012. But such bills, bar minor changes to the funding of background checks, have been dismissed. The country’s gun lobby maintains that gun ownership is a fundamental US right, enshrined in the Second Amendment.