Tom Ruby said:
They knew it was loaded. The boy was going to shoot it. When he squeezed off a burst, the recoil got away from him, the gun tipped back and he shot himself in the forehead.
Letting a kid try an uzi without an adult hand to steady and make sure it stayed pointing down range might not have been wise.
Terrible tragedy.
A team of six of us trialled the micro-UZI [the weapon being demonstrated by the people running the gun display] and found it as near as darnit unmanageable on burst-fire. The late boy’s father, who knew DS about ANY kind of firearm, erroneously believed that because it was so small, that it would be a lot easier to handle than a bigger, ie. full-size, version of the UZI, one of the best-handling SMGs ever designed.
I am 5’11" and, with a nekkid weight approaching 104 kg, built like a refrigerator. In my hands the micro-UZI was probably the most dangerous thing I have ever fired in my life, especially to me - twice I nearly put my fingers over the muzzle, and no matter how I held it, it climbed like a ferret with a rocket up its ar*e going up a up a rain-pipe.
Terrible tragedy, but more than one person is to blame here, one of who is the Police chief- who was the organisaer of the event. MA has has strict gun laws that require parental consent and the presence of a certified and licensed instructor on a one-to-one basis before a child is allowed to fire a weapon. The consent may have been there, but the ‘overseer’ on this occasion was another boy, aged fifteen. HE will not face any charges. He doesn’t have to be punished, IMO.
For the the rest of his life he will see the bullets, at 28 shots a second, blowing his little friend’s head off right in front of his eyes.
tac
