Ken Adachi said (August 29, 2014):

I see you got avalanched with a lot of cogent mail on this.

The story is probably legit, but I'm now open to the possibility of a setup, as some commentators have suggested. In this case we have video of the moments before, but we don't actually see Vacca getting shot. We have officials reporting that the video of Vacca's being shot is "ghastly" etc. However, after Sandy Hook and the Boston Marathon hoax, who in their right mind is going to believe ANYTHING that the police or Feds or hospitals, or attending physicians, or crisis actor "friends" or "witnesses" etc. have to say?

Unless we see many more conclusive photos of the bleeding and dying instructor, and find out with certainty from the ambulance crew, the nurses, physicians, family members and friends, neighbors, and see the body in the coffin,etc. , we can't REALLY be sure because we now live in "Faked News" America.

We can't forget that all recent national news stories involving shootings are setup events, either carried out by programmed, mind controlled proxies or are completely staged altogether with lying crisis "actors', lying media, lying medical examiners, lying police officials, etc.

Luke said (August 28, 2014):

Henry, I was in the US Army and National Guard for 12 years and have been on a gun ranges for years.First thing they teach you is to keep the weapon pointed down range AT ALL TIMES. After looking at the video, the instructor should have been directly behind the girl holding the weapon, not letting her hold and being positioned on her immediate left side. I agree with you in a sense about your position with children and guns. This girl's first weapon should've been a bb gun, air rifle, or at a minimum a smaller gun like a .22.Until you fire a gun or rifle, you have no idea the recoil it produces, that's why you take a balanced firing stance while holding your breath before you squeeze the trigger.
What I find strange about this is this a combat veteran and not some private right out of bootcamp. This doesn't pass the smell test at all

Dan said (August 28, 2014):

Lauren is right. The only reason this story is being played up is to manufacture more consent for gun control. I could show you dozens of photos of West Bank "settlers" teaching nine year old children, male and female, to shoot serious assault weapons. It's only stupid when Americans do it. When Palestinians do it's presented as an excuse to bomb them, children and all.

I submit that all the "crazy shooters' and incredibly stupid gun accidents paraded on TV are either made to happen, or just plain made up. It's done to create a dialectic and "the gun debate" where there was no need for debate before. If we even answer the question, we consent that there's a problem.
That's the trick.

The older I get, the more I stand on the knowledge that the common people do best when they're left to take care of themselves, their families, and each other. The same agenda that's bent on criminalizing citizen ownership of guns has decriminalized sodomy without referendums.

D.

ps: I learned to ride a horse to trot, swim in the Atlantic surf, dive from the 'deep end', and clean, load, aim and fire a .22 revolver and carbine by the time I was seven years old. I didn't 'need' to know these things, but I learned how much a boy is capable of almost as soon as he can walk. A boy needs a father for these things, and they don't want boys to have fathers, or learn how to be fathers anymore.
I mourn the systematic extinction of self-reliant men I've witness during my lifetime.

Peter C said (August 28, 2014):

When I was growing up, I was introduced to
an AIR RIFLE that shot lead butts and trained into
gun handling safety. No pistols, No live ammo.
Lots of aiming at a target without firing just to get the sense of handling the gun.

Nobody got hurt and that training was still with me when I enlisted in the military. My knowledge simply fitted in with the military training & moved forward.

One should never introduce automatic weapons to
a child. The trigger assembly is not like some guns that have a very tough trigger to squeeze. The tough squeeze is a safety factor and the trainee must acquire far more training before graduating to a highly sensitive trigger assembly.

Wade said (August 28, 2014):

A nine year old learning to shoot any fully automatic weapon is probably
a very bad idea nearly 100% of the time.

However, children are classified as anyone under the age of eighteen. I began
with a 22 caliber rifle and a single shot 20 gauge shotgun at around the age of
sixteen. With proper training and supervision I could have safely started much earlier.

Common sense is the key to safety in this issue. Kids are very different in their ability
to operate a firearm at different ages. My wife is 41 and not really safe yet. She needs
training because unfortunately she was raised by a single mother. It would have been
extremely beneficial to my wife to have been trained with sensible firearms by a competent
instructor when she was a teenager.

My wife's mother has a paranoid (unreasonable) fear of all firearms that has been transferred
to my wife. My wife's mother is 70 and to this day has never learned to use a firearm, and
probably would be afraid to even touch one.

I have a CCW and have had one for approximately 40 years with never having occasion
to use my weapon. My mother in law was uncomfortable with me being armed in her home.
One day I asked her...If you call 911 because you need police protection, do you want the
officer to show up armed or disarmed? I am more competent with a firearm than are
80% of police officers.

Females have a need to be trained in firearms just as much, and maybe even more, than males,
and it is difficult (sometimes nearly impossible) to start that training after they reach adulthood. Sensible and safe training of children, under the age of eighteen, with firearms is critical in my opinion. Just what the safe and proper age is...depends on the individual.

Bert said (August 28, 2014):

For her own future health, this little girl, needs to know that it's just not her fault. She has been forgiven, by everyone, and by society, completely and instantaneously. As she gets older, she will ask herself -- Why was a 9-year old girl pushed, even if indirectly, by comic books and MTV, into experimenting with military weaponry? She was pushed into this -- so, who was behind this "accident?" Could it be ... (perhaps you guessed it ...) the Illuminati? Absolutely.

Doug P said (August 28, 2014):

The reason that nine year old are not permitted to shoot guns is that their brains do not have the maturity to know the difference between right and wrong. If the child is supervised when shooting, I see no issue with it, and if guns are part of the culture it may make someone more safe around guns as they get older - perhaps not have that fear of them as I do. I nearly blew my foot off with a .45 once, as an adult. I have a fear of guns and its why I shouldn't be using them. Fear makes people irrational and we all have our fears.

People that have guns should know how to use them and there is no better time to learn when you are young. But a child should not have access to them unsupervised.

Of course this accident is unfortunate. No doubt the Liberal media will use it to seize upon the emotions of the public to make them more in favour of gun control.

It was an accident and should be seen as such. Nothing more.

Ken Adachi said (August 28, 2014):

Ken Adachi writes:

I find myself in agreement with both of you. Charles Vacca only lived half of his life span because he made an enormously stupid and fatal decision to put an Uzi in the hands of a 9 year old girl for the reasons that BJ Armstrong already stated: a short barrel, fully automatic machine gun has a runaway recoil unless you have the size and strength to hold it firmly enough and prevent the barrel from rising upward.

If I was there and I HAD to teach that 9 year girl how to shoot it, I would have kept both of MY hands firmly holding the Uzi, while she pulled the trigger. There is NO way any man with a lick of common sense is going to allow that little girl to control that military grade killing weapon on her own. I'm sorry for the family and children and wife of that man. But there's no one to blame but him.

On the other hand, I'm completely opposed philosophically to the idea of teaching young girls, at least before reaching high school age, to fire any kind of gun. I do understand and agree with the young boy and father scenario for those areas where it's common and normal, but not for little girls. It's just flat out wrong. The dumbed down, Illumined, warped, perverted, unthinking, brutalizing American culture that we now must endure, offers every possible means and avenue to strip every single vestige of gentleness, femininity, naivete, innocence, girliness, warmheartedness, and tenderness from American born females and devolve them into hard faced, rough talking, rough acting, and 'machoized' caricatures of American males.

You see the end product when you see photos of those absolute abominations wearing police badges or prison guard uniforms. Long live those relatively few, wonderful and abiding females who still preserve the gentility and sweetness of their God-given gifts and do everything possible to keep them intact. God bless every one of them.

Lauren said (August 28, 2014):

I would suggest that people be especially wary of these reports. Reason being that there are lots of politically motivated and false news reports put on mainstream news, more recently. There are lots of crisis actors companies and sources in the Arizona area (Mesa, Phoenix), and this report smells false to me. I didn't see any kind of actual footage of the guy being shot by her. Why is that? But they show the guy using poor gun handling and teaching protocol (on wrong side of the girl, etc. in order to grab the weapon). My initial reaction was: This is crap!

I think this is one more false report to stimulate outrage and such: "Get rid of guns!" Don't let children use guns. Most people learn when they're young. The person who said that boys should learn to handle guns, but not girls, is misguided.

Consider that most news reports are controlled, created, manipulated to shape public opinion. Military agencies in the U.S. have controlled the news for decades, for political purposes. The global elite want guns out of the public's hands, and they frequently provide guns to criminals (Fast and Furious) to make sure people get outraged when the criminals use them on our citizens. Do NOT believe everything you see on the news; most of it is intended to cause people to cry out for changes that are against the people's rights and protection, such as the Second Amendment.

How about people demand to see actual footage? Even then, there are multiple and great applications to create movies that are just that, movies, artificial, etc. 911 should have taught us that. Because we see something, doesn't mean it's real.

A I said (August 28, 2014):

With all the false flags and hoaxes in the media these days who knows if this actually even happened. They show a 10 second clip of a girl and an instructor at a shooting range then tell us a story about how the instructor was shot. Then bring out a panel of experts n lawyers to discuss it and play the clip over and over again to make it feel real. It's all about gun control. No one in the right mind would teach a young girl to shoot an Uzi. Specially an experience gun instructor. I don't think the shooting range would even allow unsafe practices like that. I wouldn't believe anything that comes out of the corporate media. Let's not forget 911, sand hook, the Boston marathon, James foley and on n on n on. This is a small lie compared to those n it's exactly that as far as I'm concerned. Another bs story to condition the population to give up their guns.

MS said (August 28, 2014):

Absolutely !! As long this planet is a predator & prey conglomerate it is very wise to teach kids as soon as possible to shoot a gun. Especially since we now are totally aware that we are not the top of the food chain. For millenia now we were used & abused by very, very evil forces, that includes just about anything & everything, from wild life to viruses, from elite cabal to aliens or indeed ETs.
.
With the governments now turning on us, too, it truly is up to our future, the youth for humanity to survive, as they turning all technology into killing machines.

Accidents will always happen, even with fire. This is obviously another big attempt for gun control. All my boys had been taught to use guns when they were 7 or 8. My girls had no interest in shooting, their beauty would stop an elephant in its track.

Elaine said (August 28, 2014):

My brothers began learning to shoot guns when they were 12 - 13 years old. My Father taught us all (including me, the only girl) to handle a gun when we were this age. There were never any problems with any of us having used a gun or handling a gun. The mentality of those in charge today, is one of having to "take care of everything and everyone for our own good." This is not a concept of the founders of our government.

Unfortunately, this arrogant idea has crept into every nook and cranny of our society with very unfortunate consequences. No one's life or liberty is now protected, since the arrogance of those who have this mentality have abrogated every foundational principle that was set down for us in our founding documents, leaving Americans in desperate condition where nothing works and nothing is intended to work and we loose all of our rights,protections and liberty because of it.

Gene said (August 28, 2014):

Yes, children should be trained to shoot guns, but not necessarily all guns. Fully automatic guns in the hands of a child is not a good idea since control of the firearm becomes more difficult even for adults, plus there is no practical reason for children to be holding one. This Arizona incident is a good example.

Children properly familiar with single shot or semiautomatic guns do not play with guns because they respect the destructive power of a gun. Curious accidental discharges by gun familiar children rarely occur. If you tell them not to touch a gun, they won’t, even if it is within their reach. I know from personal experience as a child and as a dad with children.

I have been shooting guns since I was 10-years old with my brothers ages 13 and 15 at the time. None of us ever had an accident with a gun.

Steve S said (August 28, 2014):

Unfortunate incidents like this have happened more than I care to recall. I put the blame squarely on overzealous and firearms-ignorant parents and instructors who would allow a small child to handle a type of firearm that many adults would have difficulty in handling. This is a monumental lack of discernment and the death of this particular firearms "instructor" is clearly his own fault. In other words, he killed himself. The tragedy is that the young girl participating in this demonstration in stupidity will likely be tormented for the rest of her life...

Children should not, I repeat should NOT, be exposed to NFA weapons. NFA is the National Firearms Act which taxes, registers and otherwise regulates fully automatic, silenced/suppressed, short barrel and other types of like and particular firearms.

By ending this comment, let me say I support the 2nd amendment. I support training children in the safe and respectful use of common and basic firearms such as handguns, rifles and shotguns. And while I respect the right of those who desire to own an NFA category weapon, the use and handling of such requires utmost discretion on the part of the owner as to who and how old a person can be to handle such.

Sport shooting firearms is fun, but we must be respectful and not let our zeal get the best of us. Firearms can and will kill. That is their purpose and function. When it comes to firearms, if we are grown-up, then let's start acting like one.

Art Granda said (August 28, 2014):

My father grew up in West Virginia in 40s/50s and would regularly take his shotgun to school with him and keep it in his locker. He and his friends would go hunting after school. There was no glorification or demonization of firearms then.

All the kids knew what guns were and they were all schooled in the safe use of them. I was taught safe handling of a shotgun around 12 or 13 and I knew very well that an accident would lead to disaster. Instinctively, even to this day 40 years later, all guns I handle, including air rifles, have their muzzle pointed at the ground unless I am intending to fire it. This is basic common sense.

I can't see a problem with a 9 year old being taught to shoot, but there are gun types more appropriate for a child her age, her weight, and her experience with physics. An Uzi is a gun even I would be very cautious using. Having a full auto overwhelming the shooter with recoil is something a little mind doesn't need to be burdened with.

You don't teach a kid to drive an auto ... with a Formula One race car. Too much for the inexperienced to handle.

Debra said (August 28, 2014):

Agreed with the author of the article in that it is okay for boys at a young age to learn how to shoot, but little girls are a different story. In the case of that girl, it was unsafe and it sounds like a case of feminism; what’s okay for boys is okay for girls too; NO! The media story carries with it an underlying theme of promoting women’s liberation. Unlikely we’ll hear that point debated in the media. Instead it is all about gun-control. Part and parcel with the subtle, yet forceful manipulation of the natural role of gender.

John N said (August 28, 2014):

As a matter of fact, seven was the age at which I started driving the farm tractor to help out, freeing an adult to do the heavy lifting. I graduated to the car and the pickup by the time that I was 12. I generally didn't go onto a public road unless to cross it, but loved to drive anything, and did it well. I also learned skills at an age much earlier than my urban contemporaries that put me leagues ahead of their learning curves. The day after I got my driver's licence I did all of the driving on a 1500 mile road trip, and did just fine.

So...not necessarily an open-and-shut issue.