A. First there was this:
A 9-year-old girl from New Jersey accidentally shot and killed her instructor with an Uzi submachine gun [at a shooting range in Arizona] while he stood to her left side, trying to guide her. A video of the shooting, which her parents recorded on a cellphone, suggests that the girl, in pink shorts and with a braided ponytail, was unable to control the gun’s recoil; the instructor, Charles Vacca, 39, was rushed to a hospital in Las Vegas, where he died Monday night.
B. And now today there's this:
A 7-year-old California boy was injured in the chest Saturday while target shooting at a homemade range, Sacramento TV station KCRA reported.
Deputies told KCRA that the boy was shooting at targets with his father on family property while other family members stood behind them and watched. The boy was firing a single-shot .22-caliber bolt action youth rifle with his father's help, according to a release from the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department.
C. While this is going on in some grocery stores in the U.S.:
What kind of society are WE building when A, B, and C become normal, taken-for-granted behavior in our society: taking children to gun ranges to teach them how to use assault weapons, carting babies around in grocery stores as we sling assault weapons to our shoulders?
The graphic: a primer by Louis-Gustave-Fortuné, uploaded by Wouterhagens to Wikimedia Commons.
