Category: Shooting

You can see in the comments for all these articles on the Westfield gun accident, that people are in hysterics over the incident.  Before people get out the torches and pitchforks, in an attempt to tar and feather anyone involved with this machine gun shoot, let’s just look at some comparable facts:

• Falls are the leading cause of unintentional injury for children.  Children ages 14 and under account for one-third of all fall-related visits to hospital emergency rooms.
• In 2003, nearly 285,600 children ages 14 and under were treated in the US for bicycle-related injuries. Nearly half (47 percent) of children ages 14 and under hospitalized for bicycle-related injuries are diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury.
• Drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury-related death among children ages one to 14. The majority of drownings and near-drownings occur in residential swimming pools and in open water sites.  However, children can drown in as little as one inch of water.

So before jumping to the conclusion that the father and organizers here was insane, or deserves to be in jail, people should be asking themselves whether they let their eight year old kids swim in pools, whether they have stairs in the house, and whether their kids are allowed to ride a bicycle.  Statistically, these are all much more dangerous activities than shooting.

I do think there were lapses of judgement here, but not one that amounts to ruining anyone’s life over.  A child is dead, and that’s tragic, but the fact is that bicycles and pools kill many more times the number of children each year.  When a parent loses a kid to a bicycle accident or a drowning, they get sympathy, because people recognize it for what it is: an accident.  This was also an accident.  In the coming days, the focus should be on improving safety protocols for shooting events so that things like this do not happen again.  The focus should not be on ruining people’s lives who are already having to deal with sad consequences of this accident.

I can’t imagine giving an interview to the press if my son had just been killed in an accident.  You can kind of tell the father is still in shock.  Apparenty it was the first time his kid had ever shot an automatic:

Christopher was accompanied by a trained professional as he held the 9-mm Micro Uzi machine gun at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club Sunday afternoon, but Bizilj said he doesn’t think the shooting guide was holding the weapon as his son pressed the trigger.

A micro-Uzi?   Are you kidding me?  No way in hell would I ever let an eight year old fire a micro-Uzi.  Even an adult first time machine pistol shooter would need a good bit of instruction before handing them a full magazine to dump.  Dad may not have been familiar with machine pistols, but the “trained professional” sure-as-shit should have known better.

A few weeks ago there was a mishap with a stunt demonstration involving explosives at Knob Creek.  Now an eight year old kid accidently shot himself with a submachine gun at a machine gun shoot in Westfield, Massachusetts.  I’m sorry to say, but this will probably be the end of machine gun shooting in Massachusetts.  This is the first accident I can honestly think of involving a Title II firearm, and there are hundreds of shoots like this all over the country year round, but none of that will matter to the hysterics that are going to follow in the Bay State.

This rather good article explains the decline in huting being the fault of hunters themselves.  I’ll be honest, I question whether shooters have been any better in trying to pass this tradition down to our kids.

I have not forgotten about the Gun Blog Rifle League.  I am compiling the results now, and hope to have those, in addition to the fall match, up by the end of the weekend.  I have been very busy with election stuff in the evenings, so I just haven’t gotten around to it.  Since I’m late getting this stuff out, I will extend the fall match until the New Year.

Thanks for everyone who participated.  The Fall match will be a Kalashnikov/SKS match, in addition to a small bore match most people will be able to shoot inside.  I will be more timely with the fall and winter matches, once the election is over, and my free time returns.

To the Lincoln Nebraska Police Department Pistol Team.  They “received more than 40 awards and took first place in several categories” at the NRA’s National Police Shooting Championship in New Mexico.  Well done.

Downrange TV has their coverage of our weekend at Blackwater with Todd Jarrett.

Michael Bane makes some great observations and offers suggestiosn on saving the shooting sports.  I noticed a very good comment that made a very frightening observation:

The next generation is not oriented to shooting or hunting. They spend more time on their computers then outside. In my club of 250 members there are NO children. There is dam little shooting allowed in school programs. SCTP IMO is growing because it is held AWAY from school. If you tried to have indoor ranges for rifle or pistol (as did exist several decades ago) it would fall flat on its face.

My club is composed of 240 guys, 10 women, average age is 50. Not to mention there are almost no minorities. That is another area which is not confronted honestly. You do not see representative percentages of non-whites in the shooting sports. America in not to long, will have to deal with a majority non-white population. All the demographics point in the wrong direction.

What troubles me, is my observations of club demographics is similar.  This might surprise you, but the solution is to get more women into the shooting sports.  I think women are far more likely than men to get their kids into shooting, and keep them in shooting.  I’ve seen a lot of dads bring their kids to the range and do a good job of passing the tradition along.  I’ve also seen dads that are doing their best to make sure their kid absolutely grows up to hate shooting.  I’ve never seen a woman at a range with kids in tow not doing a good job with the kids.  They are far better teachers than men are.

UPDATE: Overall there’s excellent commentary on that post.  I can only read a little bit at a time because Michael’s color scheme is very harsh on the eyes.  I can still see the text lines burnt into my retina for a minute or so after taking a break.

I’m shooting a Garand match tomorrow, and I don’t have a sling for my Garand.  I do have an M1907 sling, but that’s on my AR, and since I’m also shooting the AR in the CMP match after the Garand match, I don’t want to transfer it.  A commie sling is just going to have to do.  The one that came with my PSL seems to work fine as a hasty sling on a Garand.  I took the Garand to the range today to make sure it was zeroed, and to try some strings standing slowfire.  Unlike with my AR, my groups are all to the right, and low more often than high.  I think need to shift my weight around differently for the Garand.  Next months for the CMP match at my club, I think I’ll slap the Ko-tonics (looks like they changed names) 6.8 upper on the AR and shoot that.