Give A Kid An Uzi? Views Differ
by tristero
Can we all agree that letting a 9-year old fire an Uzi is a really nutty idea?
Actually, no we can't:
A Nevada gun range today defended having children fire automatic weapons despite the fatal accident at a nearby shooting range that occurred when a 9-year-old girl was unable to control the powerful recoil of an Uzi she was shooting.
Firing an automatic weapon teaches children the difference between their video games and the real thing, Bill Regenhardt, spokesman for The Range 702, told ABC News.
"It's an eye opener for them to see the difference: this is not a toy, this is not a plastic Wii gun. It's heavy, you have to really be mindful of what it does... A lot of times it's an eye opener for the parents as well," Regenhardt said.
For the most part, Regenhardt says that after their first time with automatic weapons, children get hooked.
"The reaction is, 'I'd like to do this again, I'd really like to do this again,'" he said. From there, they encourage the children to take classes.
Granted, there are a lot of individuals in our species, and statistically it makes sense that a small fraction of them will be both bats hit bonkers and unspeakably amoral opportunists, like the person quoted above). What makes no sense at all is that this madness is reported as if it were just one more point of view without even a token quote from anyone in the reality-based community.
The problems's not that people are crazy; some people always are. It's that crazy people - Tea Partiers, creationists, and people who give 9 year olds weapons of mass destruction to play with - are treated by the media as if their opinions are sane.
UDATE: Sigh.