To wonder what kind of idiot teaches a 9-year-old to use an Uzi

[BadLad]

m.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28948946

A 9-year-old kills her shooting instructor when she loses control of the Uzi he is teaching her to use.

Apparently many (that's right, many) firing ranges have strict rules when teaching children.

Oh well, that's all right then, what was I worried about?

[Pixel]

"Bullets and burgers" Good grief... How to trivialise the dangerous nature of a firing range!

The advantage you guys have is you're an island, a relatively small island. The entire UK is smaller than some of just one of our states. The only way to smuggle in guns is by boat, and you have a pretty competent navy to stop firearms from getting in and out of control. - Tikimon

We still have a competent navy? That's good news, I thought most of it had been scrapped. Besides which we also have these things called planes plus a big tunnel under the sea with trains in. Sorry I just don't see what being an island has to do with anything. You realise we do have human trafficking and all the other problems you use as a justification for american citizens arming themselves to the teeth?

[Stealthpolarbear]

Mrsm I don't think anyone's blaming the child

[MrsMeeple]

Nor am I. I am blaming her parents and the instructor!

[MrsMeeple]

What if it wasn't the instructor, but was someone else who happened to be standing or walking past, well behind the people firing?

[mathanxiety]

Lawsuits aplenty.

[Nusalembongan]

Pixel remember though that America is surrounded by all those marauding countries threatening to invade at any given moment ....

This thread is fascinating with many brilliant contributions from posters both from here and the States. I do think it shows the vast chasm in our cultures though - the idea of Burgers and Bullets is like something from outer space to us in the UK.

My back door is open at the moment, it's 10.30pm at night, I would no more imagine needing to 'protect' my family from anything than fly to the moon. The only people I know with guns are the local farmers taking the odd pot shot at old Foxy. The only gun that I've ever seen in my life has been slung around the neck of the airport police at Heathrow. It's such an alien concept just having a gun.

How do you change that mindset in the States? They are so fervent in their belief in the right to bear arms. It's not the Wild West any more though, can they (and you Aga) not see that?

[AllMimsyWereTheBorogoves]

“The right to bear arms is slightly less ludicrous than the right to arm bears.”

-Chris Addison

[HarrietdeBagotSoay]

I'm a Yank but have lived I the UK for 20 yrs. I don't get the gun thing; there's no logic to the laws , no credible explanation to justify the ways things are in modern America. Google "open carry laws" and see for yourself his bad things are. I will never live there again if I can help it/ this is one of the reasons. I did wonder if people shooting at police in
Ferguson would finally spark a rethink (when the Sandy Hook killings of those children did not) but it seems no. Disgusting and pathetic.

[mathanxiety]

It's the fear that I don't get.

The zeal of the gun rights crowd and the fact that protection is felt to be so necessary are elements of American life that I find completely different and alien and really hard to penetrate.

[Pixel]

Pixel remember though that America is surrounded by all those marauding countries threatening to invade at any given moment ....

And we had to manage with Captain Mainwaring .

[Pixel]

Actually Math there is another kind of fear as well isn't there. I can't imagine living my life with the constant fear that I might one day have to shoot another human being in order to save myself. I guess we all wonder sometimes, eg if we read about someone fighting off a burglar or something like that, what we would do if the same happened to us, and idly assume that in a desperate situation we would grab a kitchen knife or whack the attacker with a lamp. It must be different if you have a deadly weapon in your possession as a constant reminder that you might have to use it for protection.

[Pixel]

Sorry, that was a bit garbled. What I mean is having a gun could make you feel more unsafe than not having one iyswim. But people don't understand that and think they need more guns...

Does that make any sense at all?

[mathanxiety]

Yes I think that is very true.

You have crossed a line from having a sense that there is sometimes danger (from mugging, etc) into thinking you will need something to protect yourself if and when that happens. Then with something like open carry you cross another line and dare anyone to mess with you, with your gun strapped across your chest pushing your cart full of breakfast cereal and milk and sliced bread around a suburban supermarket somewhere in the suburbs of Kansas City -- perhaps on the Kansas side, where you are less likely to encounter danger in the parking lot than you are to be struck by lightning.. It's an expression of machismo, of being all powerful. You are saying nobody is going to push you around.

I think the rise of this adamant expression of being totally in control coincided with the rise of women's lib, the anti-war protest movement and the Civil Rights movement. I think it's a reaction on the part of a very white dominated and very patriarchal society that had quite rigid expectations of male/female, and black/white roles that were suddenly cast aside. I think politicians like Richard Nixon and Reagan contributed to the sense of their core electorate that cherished values were being trampled upon, and the sense of being a besieged moral force.

[Nusalembongan]

I just so cannot imagine seeing someone with a gun strapped to their body in a supermarket?! It just defies all logic and common sense.

[Pixel]

Mmm, I suppose...not totally sure. Someone could want it to say 'nobody is going to push me around', but they could actually be saying 'I'm scared someone is going to hurt me even while I'm getting my groceries'. In a way it makes them look weak even while they are trying to look strong. Not that I'd argue with them either way...

[Nusalembongan]

Trying to imagine it in Waitrose Guildford .....

[StevesBollockAnalogy]

None of the gun people have answered the question "What are guns for?"
To me it seems there is only one answer. To kill. Correct me if I am wrong, but I'm not. Whether you're killing an animal for food or a person is irrelevant, because the end goal is the same. The target ends up dead.

My response to this is why would you want to? If someone breaks into my house, I would not kill them, I would go quietly to my children and let them take my TV or whatever they want. It's just stuff, it's replaceable and insured. It is not worth killing someone over. The only situation I would ever even contemplate wanting to kill anything would be to save my child or husband. Perhaps I would do it to save myself, I really don't know.

Why would I cling so ferociously to my rights to kill someone? Why would anyone? Why would my right to have the potential to kill be more valuable than the lives of thousands and thousands of people who die needlessly at the hands of guns every year? To me, it isn't so much "Guns aren't the problem, people are" as "Why don't killing machines repulse you?!"

To Tiki and those who say "Guns aren't the problem, people are"- what makes American people so much more murderous?

[BadLad]

I just so cannot imagine seeing someone with a gun strapped to their body in a supermarket?! It just defies all logic and common sense.

There are times when I've wanted one. Like when those charity packers ambush me at the checkout.

[differentnameforthis]

How many violent crimes were committed with bicycles? I can't find the statistics for that! I wonder if they have been sealed as the truth is just too grim?

[TurquoiseDress]

I couldn't believe this story when I first heard about it on the BBC.

Then the bit about "Burgers & Bullets" WTAF?!! Kind of reinforces stereotypes about Americans and their love of guns.

I do not get the whole gun thing in the States.
Not read the whole thread, just wanted to comment.

[Stealthpolarbear]

Well dh will be armed and ready (with a bike) on his way to work. It's a slippery lope, before you know it he'll be buying bikes for all different road surfaces and googling bike lube late into the night. Oh wait...

[SignYourNameInBrownAndFlame]

I agree with Pixel - there is an irony in Americans taking pride in being the "Land of the Free" when so many are patently unfree from fear and paranoia that they feel the need to carry a gun.

There is more than one kind of freedom.

[SignYourNameInBrownAndFlame]

And Tikimon you can put up as many straw man arguments as you want about cancer and those pesky scary Russkies and knives being as dangerous as guns (which is why all those armies of the world have turned back to that most effective of killing machines, the sword...oh, wait...) but what it boils down to is this:

Someone thought it was a good business idea to set up places where children as young as, and younger, than nine years old can aim a weapon designed for the sole purpose of killing the maximum number of people in the shortest possible time at a human-shaped target. Apparently educated, intelligent parents think that watching "l'il Tiffany" spraying bullets from a machine invented for the purpose of killing other human brings and for no other reason makes for wholesome family holiday memories.

That business and those parental holiday choices did not spring up, fully-formed, in a bubble. They are the product of a nation internalising for years that it is normal, even desirable, to possess an item which was designed purely to kill people in warfare.

None of those things are normal. It is not a psychologically healthy mindset to hold. And if you can't see that, I feel desperately sorry for you.

[SignYourNameInBrownAndFlame]

other human beings

[SignYourNameInBrownAndFlame]

And "effective" should read "efficient". Damned autocorrect.