Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[GavJ]

but this is a clear case of serious negligence.

Yes, obviously negligent one way or the other. No question.

I'm merely arguing that the concept of parents considering this isnt' necessarily insane, but that it might instead be, as you're suggesting, a firing range procedures failure.  A matter of WHERE the negligence is being assumed by people reacting to the story, versus where it might actually lie.

[Graknorke]

"9-year girl accidentally impregnated by sex instructor in accident"

Pretending that analogies are just trivially not a real thing, or useful, or that they have to be 100% PERFECTLY alignable (which would make it not an analogy anymore...) is a tedious and poor route of argumentation. The biology thing is reasonable, because it strikes at the core of the analogy along the dimension that is being compared and that matters (although I think it's wrong, as mentioned above). This is just grasping at straws, though.

There are obvious casualties to sex ed all the time. Namely, if you give a person incorrect information, and then they go use it while having sex with somebody and get a disease, then they can die or be made sterile or all sorts of things as a result. Just like gun training can have casualties. Requiring that it be literally the instructor involved to be valid is just trying to obnoxiously derail and distract, and you know it.

I disagree that it's to derail and distract.
There is a very big distinction between teaching by explaining something and teaching by demonstrating.

[RedKing]

I could take that argument a bit more seriously if this was a serious firing range, and not some Arizona roadside tourist trap called Bullets and Burgers. 

[Zangi]

On the issue, training kids to use firearms, I think it a good concept to teach the kid the responsibilities and handling of a firearm.  It is markedly better then hollywood knowledge anyways.  (Also, I'm not into the total censorship thing that people like to have for kids.  They'll learn about things eventually, may as well make sure they learn it right and with proper support, rather then coming to terms with it on their own.)

On this particular event, it is a failure on the part of the trainer in probably more ways then one to end up getting shot by the kid.  (I don't know the details behind the kid's training so far or anything else, so cannot comment.) 

[GavJ]

I could take that argument a bit more seriously if this was a serious firing range, and not some Arizona roadside tourist trap called Bullets and Burgers. 

I would argue that the fact an accident happened at Bullets and Burgers in fact strengthens the devil's advocate position. Because it increases the likelihood that the accident was due to it being a shitty, poorly regulated tourist trap that doesn't have good procedures, versus just an inherent danger of training children with firearms in general.

[RedKing]

I yield. I don't have the energy to argue down this rabbit hole any further. Arm your kids all you want, just keep them the fuck away from mine.

I'm just glad it wasn't the kid that got killed. Though she's probably going to need therapy for years.

[Puzzlemaker]

I feel like it really boils down to:  Guns should be taken seriously at all times.  Letting children get used to guns (Not play) is perfectly fine, but should be done in a responsible manner.  Giving a nine year old an automatic weapon that is hard for even an adult to control is not responsible. 

Honestly I would be fine with letting a nine year old handle a heavy machine gun, if only because the recoil isn't going to make it go all over the place. 

[GavJ]

I agree that an uzi is a poor choice by any logic. As suggested above, assuming you even think it's necessary to give experience with high recoil once or twice for perspective (which is not a trivial assumption), a much better choice would be a black powder rifle or something. Even if you utterly fail to secure it (which you should), and it irresponsibly flies out of a person's hands and spins through the air, it's not gonna shoot anybody, because it only had a single round in the entire gun. So you have a huge extra layer of security on top of whatever else is your primary means of keeping it in one place.

[Sergarr]

The gun situation will only worsen while these guys continue to shoot people on-will.

[nenjin]

Also safeties and, y'know, unloading the gorram gun. Curiosity and idle hands isn't going to pick 2-3 different locks and figure out how to load a smg. The one that should be actively under lock and key unless being used. Probably well out of the reach of anyone as young as the kid in question.

I'm going to disagree here, only because I was one of those kids who found locked containers and was encouraged to learn lock picking to see what was inside. Made my dad fucking furious.

And what I disagree with here isn't training a child to use a firearm (mostly.) It's the sheer irresponsibility of putting a gang-land weapon in the hands of a child and a supposedly qualified firearms instructor was too stupid to realize it was a bad idea. I half expect this article to be followed up by another story "Child explodes half a dozen tourists at "Bob's Pizza and Grenade Launcher Fun Plex."

The sheer idiocy of trying to integrate fully automatic weapons into family fun time makes me want to require AZ to secede from the US. That way there will at least be some border control when they try to breed that level of fucking stupid into the rest of the country. The willful ignorance of pursuing a bad idea in the name of "Freedom!" is just galling.

At least this girl, at the tender age of 9, has learned a lesson that escapes the vast majority of gun enthusiasts in the US: guns kill. That is their purpose. You can make a recreational activity out of a lethal one, and there are tragic consequences because of it.

[RedKing]

That's hardly the only reason to want Arizona kicked out of the Union.

(yay for politics re-rail)

[Baffler]

Well I was ninja'd by Lord Shonus, mostly. Hunting is big where I am, and lots of kids go out with their fathers as early as the 8th grade. Before they go out, they learn all about both safety and the operation of the thing, and get a feel for whatever it is they're using by shooting at targets. All of this is taken very seriously by everyone, and it's been years and years since any accident has occurred.

I could take that argument a bit more seriously if this was a serious firing range, and not some Arizona roadside tourist trap called Bullets and Burgers. 

Also this. Who thought it was a good idea to take their kid to such a place?

Edit: Jeez guys, it's not every day I see 12 replies have been made while I was typing my post.

[Sergarr]

Don't tell me people hunt in your area with fully automatic submachine-guns. I still want to have some hope for humanity.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Also this. Who thought it was a good idea to take their kid to such a place?

Probably someone who never bothered to teach their child gun safety yet expects them to learn it from a place called 'Bullets and Burgers' without incident as opposed to y'know a real firing range.

Only in America. No regulation needed for firearms at all here, no sir.

[nenjin]

Also this. Who thought it was a good idea to take their kid to such a place?

Flag-waving idiots with more "patriotism" than brains.