The 9-year-old girl who inadvertently shot and killed an instructor at a shooting range has an awful lot to process. Among the long list of heavy topics for the child to come to terms with – and that which will be most difficult to answer – is why on Earth the adults supervising her felt it appropriate to give her an Uzi to shoot. There is no reasonable answer, of course, and as a result, the girl must sort through the resulting tragedy. It was wholly avoidable and profoundly inexcusable.
An Uzi is a submachine gun designed by an Israel Defense Forces captain, Uziel Gal. It was first put into use by IDF special forces in 1954. The larger army began using it several years later. Its primary function was for battle: personal defense as well as attacks led by elite frontline troops. It is a fully automatic weapon designed for intense military application. No 9-year-old child belongs anywhere near one.
But for reasons unfathomable, a family excursion to the Last Stop shooting range outside Las Vegas last week led to just such a pairing and its most devastating, if predictable, result. That no one – the girl’s parents, who readily turned their daughter loose with the Uzi, the range’s instructor who lost his life as a result, or the facility’s operators who allowed such inappropriate behavior – thought twice about the matter beforehand is relatively shocking.
Indeed, it was the girl herself who realized – before learning she had shot the instructor – that she should not be handling the weapon. She should not have had that responsibility. After the instructor, Charles Vacca, switched the gun to fully automatic mode, the girl lost control of the weapon as it sprayed. A bullet hit Vacca in the side of the head. Unaware of this, the girl returned to her parents – who were videotaping the entire escapade – and told them “the gun was too much for her and it hurt her shoulder,” the child’s mother said to police. It is unforgivable that the 9-year-old was left to make this determination – after an irreparable harm had occurred.
There are many instances in which it is appropriate for a child to handle a firearm, and well-established protocols to ensure that the circumstances are safe. USA Shooting has a full litany of youth programs for those geared toward shooting sports, as does 4-H, the National Rifle Association, the Boy Scouts and the American Legion. Safety is paramount among each of these programs. Matching children to a weapon they can handle, educating them about what to expect in the handling and training them to understand the associated risks are fundamental. In the Last Stop incident, these basic steps were flagrantly ignored.
Whether access to an Uzi is appropriate for any civilian is a secondary question, but one that is certainly worth asking given the relatively cavalier attitude with which the girl’s family and the Last Stop staff approached the weapon’s availability to one and all. Such a weapon should never be treated as a novelty. In this incident, it was. The outcome was profoundly sad. A man lost his life, and young girl is left to reconcile a scenario she should never have had to endure.