FAMILY OF DEAD FIREARMS INSTRUCTOR SUES RANGE

By Bob Walsh

Regular readers will remember this incident. A nine-year old girl shot and killed a firearms instructor at a range in Arizona two years ago. The instructor allowed the nine-year old to fire a fully automatic Uzi with (IMHO) inadequate supervision and preparation. In any event the man is dead and his survivors are suing the gun range.

The family asserts (probably correctly) that the mini-Uzi should never have been placed in the girls hands. The lawyer asserts that Charlie Vacca, the firearms instructor, was killed because that act was fundamentally unsafe. That is also probably correct.

I suspect that much of this will hinge on whether or not the instructor or some other person at the range allowed the youngster to shoot and what authority, if any, the instructor had over the situation. My inclination, based on very little information, would lead me to believe that the instructor was largely responsible for the situation ASSUMING that he had control over the situation and veto power over who was allowed to shoot under his direction.

I actually have significant training and experience in this area and I would certainly never have let a physically small, young child fire a fully automatic weapon with zero preparation and orientation.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I think it’s a stretch for the family to sue the range when it was the stupidity of their loved one in allowing a 9-year-old to fire an Uzi that caused his death.

Every firing range I’ve ever been to where there was an instructor present, that instructor was in charge, not the range operators. Now this another stretch, but maybe the family would have a better legal standing by suing the range for employing an idiot instructor.