NOT SMART
THE KID AND THE UZI
THE KID AND THE UZI
The incident in Arizona is tragic. A shooting instructor is dead and a 9 year old girl must live the rest of her life with the trauma of having killed a man. Tragic yes, but avoidable and criminally stupid.
There is something repugnant. Pay a couple hundred dollars and go from your hotel in Vegas to a shooting range where your child is given a chance to handle serious and obviously deadly weapons and then finish with hamburgers?Bullets and Burgers! Has the All American vacation come to this? What impression does that leave on a young mind?
Having used an Uzi and knowing the kind of power it possesses, I think it should never be put into the hands of a child for commercial purposes. I've been instructed by FBI firearms instructors and US Army trainers and state police trainers and know from personal experience that lethal weapons are meant to be handled and used in ways other than at a tourist shooting range where sissy or junior can fire away and eat a hamburger before going back to that cultural bastion of Las Vegas.
A friend wrote yesterday she thinks the parents should be charged with manslaughter. Maybe so. But certainly age limits should be imposed or perhaps the operation shut down entirely.
ALSO NOT SMART
That is smoke above the camp chairs, drifting into the 70 degree plus late morning temperature. It comes from the fire ring located immediately adjacent to bone dry grassland scrub near a forest suffering the third year of a drought. I can think of no sane reason the state of California permits open fires. That is more so during summer, especially in drought years. A careless act or a wayward ember could create a disastrous consequence. It happens.
I've enjoyed camp fires in California parks, but during winter, near a stream or the Pacific and never in a drought. Even then I thought the practice was foolish, deep in a forest or under majestic redwoods. The potential consequence is simply too much for a practice fraught with carelessness, inexperience and hazards.
Stupidity stalks us when you see a cigarette butt on a dry and dusty trail. It is rude when people drop butts in public places, but it is idiocy A) to smoke on a trail and B) to drop a butt near tinder like scrub in a drought. Duh! How can anyway not see the folly in that? As is obvious this offender failed even to stomp and mash the butt to assure no hot ash could be left to create a fire.
AND NOW, MORE PLEASANT DIVERSIONS
NOSTALGIC
ANOTHER THROWBACK
Indianapolis Raceway Park in the '70's. There was a time I'd jump at any chance to get in any racing machine.
On this day we were running hot laps, going for speed with no one else on the track. That was probably a good thing.
See you down the trail.
I note the "instructor" who was killed at Bullets and Burgers was highly trained and former military. Most Infantrymen are lousy shots. The fetish for automatic weapons is sick considering the new M-4 is limited to 3 round bursts. The old M-16 with the full auto option is history in the Army and Marine Corps. One of my student's father used to run the FBI SWAT Team in LA. He took the 4 week tactical shooting course at Fort Bragg, he told me the top of the class could only hit targets at a 60% average at best and that was after firing 2500 rounds a week. Most were in the 40% range. He said civilians who think they could take down a shooter in a mall are nuts. He said most civilians fall in the class of CHS. (Can't Hit Shit)
ReplyDeleteYes, bone dry grassland. Almost everywhere in California. it is time for more people to do more about making sure there is adequate water for fire protection. One retired fire fighter just this morning tells me that if amount of water available to fight fires is inadequate it is possible that insurance companies will not renew insurance policies for the homes in the area. Of course, there is always the chance of getting a substandard policy for an annual premium that equals a third of the value of the property.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more with your statements about that girl with the Uzi and lighting fires during a drought. Sometimes I wonder how human beings have managed to survive for so long. Probably because once upon a time the world was a big place. Anyway, you look like a handsome young Mak Spitz in that race car. Have a terrific weekend.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jager's last two sentences.
ReplyDelete