Eight year old boy killed while firing an uzi

News article here.

The comcast.net version of the article identified the dad as an ER phycician from western Connecticut. Instructor present, dad apparently helping the child stay upright.

I believe that kids are better off learning to understand and shoot guns than not. It appears that these were not stupid people, and that this was not an uncontrolled situation. Misfortune? Bad judgment?

I'd say both - simply too much for a small child to handle and things went south from there.
There's a reason why you're not supposed to carry more gun than you can handle.

I'm not sure what the instructor or father was thinking. Seems like a lot of gun for a little guy like that. And it just takes a second for something to happen. It seems to me the news said this morning that dad had reached for a camera. I remember an almost incident at the range. A young boy was "helping" dad by collecting the spent shells, but this one time decided to get a head start. He started moving from behind dad forward toward the muzzle as dad was pulling the trigger. Had to grab 'em.

A very sad situation.

I'd guess you're very likely correct.

crap. That sucks really really bad.

That's insane!!

Might have overlooked the best practice that suggests you start 'em with a single round. Then two. Then three to see how they handle it before giving a full magazine.

Terrible tragedy.

An acquaintance was killed at our local range when his 1911 went full-auto on him. Experienced guy, but a worn sear is a big surprise and muzzle climb happens real fast. makes that crossbow thread look better and better.

Again no-one is taking any responsibility for this gun related death. The supervising adults responsible for putting an Uzi machine gun into this childs hands should be charged with manslaughter. They are responsible for the death of this child, not the child, 'Self-inflicted accidental shooting' is just absolutely pathetic.

Dear God, an 8-year-old with an Uzi?

IMO, without knowing all the facts, it seems like it was simply an unfortunate accident.

While I do agree children should be exposed to proper firearm use and safety from an early age, one also has to keep in mind they are dangerous and sometimes stuff can happen. It's no different than teaching your kid to swim, teaching them to ride a dirtbike, or anything else like that. Sometimes you think you're doing everything right and still, something bad can happen.

"Again no-one is taking any responsibility for this gun related death. The supervising adults responsible for putting an Uzi machine gun into this childs hands should be charged with manslaughter. They are responsible for the death of this child, not the child, 'Self-inflicted accidental shooting' is just absolutely pathetic."

Could not agree more. Clearly the 'supervision' was nothing of the sort.

While I share your upset, I don't think charging them with manslaughter is going to help anything. They probably, particularly the father, have enough suffering on their hands.

Call me old fashioned, but generally back in the day we started out with BB and pellet air guns, moved up to .22's (bolt action), and then finally larger caliber or semi-automatic rifles when we were teenagers.

Am fear, obviously there is a greatly different culture regarding firearms between the UK and USA.

That said,this isn't the time or place to debate it, and I'll lock this thread if we drag out stale men's room arguments.

The man's son is dead. You want to destroy the rest of his family further? He made a poor decision partly based on the dangerous credential called 'experience.'

My favourite F 1 driver is Graham Hill. He did the same thing flying an airplane after retirement.

From a purely legal perspective, I'd suspect that a good criminal defense attorney could successfully defend the father and the instructor against a negligent homicide charge.

From the news article it appears that the father was physically supporting the boy in handling the weapon, and was doing so under the supervision of a qualified instructor under controlled circumstances. It doesn't appear that this was some gun nut turning the boy loose with an Uzi in the back yard.

Not every tragedy is rooted in negligence, at least not negligence that rises to the high level of criminal culpability. It is possible for a reasonable person to believe that an adult, by holding and guiding an eight year old boy's arms or hands, could prevent the gun from being pointed or fired in an unsafe direction while on a supervised gun range. Indeed, it is a fairly common practice when introducing youngsters to firearms, and not incidentally, to their destructive potential.

While I do agree that criminal negligence should not be excused merely because the victim is someone the perpetrator feels particularly bad about harming, I think criminal prosecution should be reserved for the most reckless kinds of conduct. Rest assured, if you kill your child by choosing to drive while drunk, for example, you will and should be criminally prosecuted, but I don't see that kind of criminal culpability here.

Jeff

I view this incident in the same way I'd view someone letting their toddler go out to play with the neighbor's pit bull. I am not against pit bulls, but would question the wisdom of someone putting an inadequately supervised child in the yard with one. Same thing goes for firearms. I'm not against them. Even a full auto Uzi. But putting an inadequately supervised child in touch with one... ??? !!!

What gets me is the dad is head of some emergency medicine operation. That would indicate to me that he's not a Neanderthal in the brain department. So the fact that this could happen while he was present is really mystifying to me.

Sad, so sad. A single shot .22 might have been a better way to start out...

If so, then this sounding more like simply a tragic accident IMHO. But I thought I read somewhere that the dad was back getting his camera while the child was left with the Uzi. If the dad was actually holding the gun with the childs hands in contact, I would hope that the dad had previously shot the Uzi by himself to know what to expect. I certainly wouldn't know how much muzzle rise to expect myself, I've never shot a full auto weapon. If I ever do, my fist time won't be with a child piggy-backing on me.

"Francis Mitchell, a longtime member and trustee of the club, said he was told the boy's father was supporting his son from behind when the incident happened."

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10282008/news/nationalnews/kid__8__in_uzi_death_horror_135645.htm

I'm making a bit of an assumption that "supporting . . . from behind" means the typical practice of helping the boy hold and control the weapon. I can't imagine what else the father would be doing there, otherwise.

Jeff

Having never shot a true automatic, would I be correct to assume that a longer barrel would have been inately more safe since the business end of the barrel would have moved above his head rather than below it?

Also, are uzi's "supposed" to be fired straight-armed? Kind of like a pistol? If so, would that mean the gun's tip could/should have moved above his head rather than below his head?

Not inferring any negligence ... just wondering.

BTW ... they just discussed this on Fox News.

Very VERY sad indeed.

Ken K.

This makes me think of how ridiculous it is that with digital cameras everywhere, everyone wants to take pictures of everything. At what point do we miss the experience cause we're trying so hard to capture it?

Has it been established that this was indeed a fully automatic weapon? Typically, Uzi's in the US are semi-automatic. Full automatic weapons are highly regulated in the US. You can own them, but you have to have special permits, a lot of hassles, pay fees, etc. Fully automatic weapons are pretty rare in the hands of law-abiding citizens.

UPDATE: OK, strike that. It was specifically a machine gun shoot. It probably was full auto.

Sigh. Now the anti-gun crowd will want to seize on this and ...

Concur.

Although in the spirit of full disclosure, when I was 8, I was already firing an Garand from a rest. But I was seated- it was almost as long as I was tall.

Uzis are meant to be fired from the shoulder. They generally have a fixed or collapsible stock. I got to fire a suppressed full auto Uzi a couple of. Muzzle climb wasn't terrible, but I fired short bursts it had an extra foot or so of metal hanging off the muzzle.

What a tragedy.

No, not a Neanderthal, but doesn't make him an expert in automatic weapons, or weapons in general. Having been involved in aviation safety, I know doctors and lawyers can afford "toys" in which they are not expert, don't have/get the training they should have, and can get themselves in situations beyond their ability to deal effectively. Perhaps he was new to the Uzi and that's why the instructor was there. And they allowed the child to play w/ Dad's new gun.

In any respect, it's a sad situation for the family and the instructor. And yes, the antis will use it to their advantage.

Uzi's are meant to be be shoulder fires, using either a non-collapseable wooden stock or a metal one that can. It can also be fired without the stock, either not engaging the metal collapseable one or removing the wood standard one. The uzi is very "heavy" vs the size/power of the 9mm round it fires. Muzzle climb normally isn't a problem, its heavy enough that the uzi gently rocks rather than climbs. Without any of us being there we will never know why this tragedy occured. I have supervised over 2 dozen machine gun shoots for Florida Ammo Traders when the previous owner still had his class 2 licence. I have braced many an inexperienced shooter. Either placing my foot behind theirs, hand on back or one hand on hip standing close with an arm ready to grab a raising barrel. Always had a mechanics heat glove to protect from the heat of the weapon, luckily never had to grab an errant barrel.
And yes, I've had 8 to 12 year olds fire our uzi's as its the only "safe" machine gun we owned for a younger, weaker person to control, that we were comfortable with. Look at some of the news reels and you'll see children in Africa and the Middle East with AK-47's, full auto. A true tragedy at the least. My sympathies go out to the dad and brother who had to witness this and deal with it. As well as the others there that day.

-Bill Liptak

According to news reports the weapon being used by the 8 year boy was a micro Uzi.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0k6y8VOjOhc

Judging from this video the weapon appears to have has a nasty tendacy to pull up even when an adult is using the weapon. If the stock isn't correctly deployed or the stock slips from the shoulder due to recoil then I suspect this weapon would easily rotate especially in the hands of a child.

The father was apparently 10 feet away attempting to take some photographs or video. Youtube is full of videos showing very young children firing extremely powerful weapons.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sgioghA1QEc&feature=related

And yes there are videos of very young children firing full automatic Uzi's while the photographer is in the front right quarter taking the video .

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=s6BV8P0nNas&feature=related

So I guess this type of story doesn't really surprise me.

Anyone beside OBG know the US car involved in the most fatal accidents?

Anyone know why?

Good question. I suspect it is the one with the most models on the road or more accurately the one with the most miles driven per year?

Sometimes an accident is just that, an accident.


I feel sorry for the family, I could not imagine loosing my son.

Very difficult to find that information about the deadliest car. I found the Chevy Blazer as the worst. Another site said the Dodge Neon. Couldn't find any official statistics to back it up though.

EDITED:
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2007/04/iihs_lists_dead.html

Seems like the Acura RSX is the deadliest car, right behind the Chevy Blazer.

Is that what you were looking for?

I have no idea what the car is, but the Crown Vic comes to mind. They've been around a long time (without getting a lot of the latest safety equipment) and they're often used by police (chases) and in livery/fleet situations (often times people don't use seat belts in cabs/limos). So I could see them being involved in a lot of fatal crashes.

Again, just a guess, I have no idea.

"...the dad is head of some emergency medicine operation. That would indicate to me that he's not a Neanderthal in the brain department. So the fact that this could happen while he was present is really mystifying to me."

Why? Intelligence and common sense are two entirely different things. I know people who have an I.Q. over the genius level, and they still confound me eith the incredibly stupid decisions they make.

Sue

Just because a guys a doctor doesn’t make him smart. When I was in high school I worked at a service station that catered to well off people. Lots of times you would explain what you were doing to an auto and it amazed me that a doctor could not understand a simple mechanical thing like a water pump or differential.

I use to joke about it to never go to any of these doctors. If they can’t understand how a water pump works, how do they understand the human body???

There are some parents who put their kids in danger all the time.

Some parents will put their 3-year-old in the driver's seat of an ATV and turn them loose. They are still leaving them in hot cars and alone in bathtubs. You still see them driving along with kids loose in the back seat. They let their kids run up to and grab unknown dogs. They take them out onto the water without safety vests. They tease and torment them into doing things they don't want to do. They put them in danger while feeding their own egos.

Maybe Munchausen by Proxy is more common that currently believed.

Cynical Sue

When I was twelve, I had a friend who I shared a school locker with. He and his family were avid hunters, and I really admired the way he and his dad were together, and how willing his dad was to teach him about firearms and give him responsibilities, like cleaning them after they used them. My daughters were raised similarly, though they considered it more of a chore than I ever did. Occasionally I would get invited to go shoot skeet or some such, and would relish the cleaning experience almost as much.

On a Tuesday morning in 7th grade, I got called to the principal's office. There I was informed that I had to clean all my friend's items out of the locker and put them in a box to return to the office. Bewildered, I did as told, and when I returned, I was brought into the counselor's office, where I was told how my friend had been cleaning a shotgun unsupervised, as he had done a number of times before, and forgot to check if it was loaded, which it was, and shot himself in the face and died. A numbing shock was all that I could feel. I had no idea what to do after that. Subsequently I was not allowed to contact the family, nor did my parents let me attend the funeral. That pissed me off some, but I was also a bit relieved, because knowing his father, I knew he was eating his guts and would be for a long time, and even naive as I was about a lot of things in life then, I knew that to see them would be quite uncomfortable for me. I never cried for my friend, but I regret the time we lost finishing our childhood together, and how much it changed the outcome of my life while he was alive, and how horribly terrible it would feel if ever I faced that situation as a dad. I eventually discovered that his family moved away within the year, and he gave up shooting sports for the most part.

There is no court in the land that will try and convict this poor man anywhere nearly as much as his own conscience is doing and will continue to do to him the rest of his days. He is facing a life sentence, no parole, no leniency, no hope. He will face it every time he looks into the eyes of his wife, any other children he might have, or even the children of others. No penalty any other man on earth could impose, legal or not, will ever weigh as heavily on this poor soul as what he will do to himself. No one here would ever want to go through what he must now face. He made a mistake, and his son paid the price. That is not an accident, it is a mistake, and it is part of being human.

Any of you who have the faith, I would advise praying for this poor soul. He and his family are going to need a lot of help.

As somebody has already mentioned, youtube.com is filled with videos of people doing incredibly stupid things with firearms! There are little kids being bullied into shooting magnums that knock them down so the "adults" can laugh at them. Just about any unsafe gun handling practice you can think of is recorded for posterity. That is why I never go to a public range any more.

I understand your concern. For the same reason, I chose to become a range officer and a hunter education instructor, in the hopes that I could help correct some of this egregious behavior.

Very well said.


Amen.

That must have been really tough to lose your friend as you did; I thank you for sharing that story. I think it's really cool though that you now work to try to prevent such things.

Not all public ranges are bad. I have one near me that is run extremely well. Quite a tight ship. I have no qualms about shooting there. But I suppose "public range" can mean just about anything. Including a bunch of yahoos shooting into a dirt hill informally.

Any type of public place will vary according to who runs it and what they allow to happen. My local range, staffed by volunteers, has never been problematic.

Heck, I have had doctors stop at accident scenes to "help." Some were so far removed from emergency trama medicine that I had to run them off, they did more harm than good. A doctor who couldn't even doctor...

My AAA insurance agent, severl CHiP acquaintances hold the FORD Mustang + a young male driver, full of testosterone and lacking experience their anecdotal #1 killer combination.

My point, uzis and inexperienced kids OR adults don't mix well.

Quote from article: "Francis Mitchell, a longtime member and trustee of the club, said he was told the boy's father was supporting his son from behind when the incident happened".

That part of the news report is a report of hearsay. We do not actually know if he was or was not.

Also: It would appear that either he was allowed to fire a fully automatic weapon, or the weapon itself was defective.

I personally do not have issues with introducing boy's of that age to firearms. The younger they are taught to understand and respect them the better.

But it would appear to me that the instructor also has a great deal to answer for.

Part of me thinks that the instructor and the father should do the decent thing. The rest of me thinks that would be far too easy an out for them.

What is "the decent thing"? I don't understand what you're getting at.

The damage has been done. All who were directly involved in this error are going to pay, no question about it. Anything more that could be done to them at this point is like stepping on a spider a second time. The best society can do is try to learn from this experience and help others avoid such an outcome, which doesn't necessarily imply prevention.

I take decent thing as a terminal event.

Decent thing? Do you mean suicide? Adding intentional self-homocide to accidental? Compounding one tragedy with another hardly seems helpful.

It's ALL hearsay, from news reporters. Until the principles tell their story, preferably under oath, we are all just speculating on hearsay.



In my not particularly humble opinion, suicide is for losers and the terminally ill with intractable pain. It's not for husbands and fathers of children. (although I regard suicide as a fundamental human right)

I agree with Hikin' Jim. It just compounds the tragedy. The dad needs to cowboy up, face the consequences, and try to help his wife, surviving son, and remaining family cope.

As for the instructor, he may have more legal exposure than the father.

I will withhold judgment until the facts are fully developed and reported, and say a prayer for all who were touched by this tragic event.

Jeff

The paramedic's rules for unknown doctors on scene:

1. They are all proctologists, not emergency medicine types, until proven otherwise.

2. Never turn your back on an unknown doctor.

Jeff

A friend's father once owned a 427 Cobra, a hot little car from back when I was a kid. I remember reading somewhere that about 10% of the people that bought them didn't live long enough to make the first payment!

In the UK 'the decent thing' is to commit suicide. Lucky lord Lucien was supposed to do this after mistakenly killing the nanny he mistook for his wife.

One of my ancestors waited for the laird to do the decent thng. The laird thought it great fun to strip a young female tenant, have her flee in front of the male guests assembled for a fox hunt and gave her to the winner.

When he got tired of waiting, that Kavanaugh shot the laird, his 3 male heirs, wiping out the family lineage and burned the manor to the ground.Then he became an artilllaryman in the Austro-Hungarian army, the american army, the mexican as a san Patricio Gringo and then moved to California, where we keep our firearms cleaned and oiled.

Lets have no more talk of social decency.

There's got to be a Hollywood movie script and box office hit movie in that story somewhere.

Didn't Lee Marvin play that part in a Western movie with Burt Lancaster and Jack Palance?

Richard Bingham. 7th Earl of Lucan.

I like your ancestors style.

Here's what is going on with this tragic story. Some indictments have been handed down, including for involuntary manslaughter.

One thing I never heard before, the child was being supervised by an uncertified 15-year old (the 15-year old is not being indicted, if anyone is wondering before reading the article) when the child lost control of the Micro Uzi.