Friday, August 29, 2014

Sigh

I come from a place where hunting is part of the culture, which means guns are familiar tools.  [Feel free to clutch your pearls now, Episcopal clergy in Connecticut.]  I fired my first rifle at the age of 12, which was the way it worked.  It was a single shot .22 short, for those of you who know what that means.  We worked up from there, with care and very cautious instruction.  [My uncle was a state cop and was scrupulous about safe training].  When I was fifteen, I fired my first sub-machine gun, a Thompson, but only on single fire.  We were never permitted to fire it on full-auto.  In fact, current infantry rifles don't have a full-auto capability.

Clearly, the age of my uncle is over, as at least twice now in the past few years, gun "instructors" [Who certifies these people anymore?] have allowed a child to fire a full-auto, short-barreled, and notoriously unwieldy weapon with predictable and tragic results.  [Gunnery Sergeant Jackson, who was ultimately responsible for my training in military riflery, had some very pungent things to say about the uselessness of the Uzi.]

This story is incredibly sad, as it means that this child now has a mortal trauma with which to deal for the remainder of her life.