Not that it's a surprise, but the NRA once again proves the obvious. It's a wretched organization led by
wretched people:
On Monday, a 9-year-old girl accidentally shot and killed her shooting instructor with a submachine gun called an Uzi. The girl accidentally pointed the weapon up towards her instructor when the enormous weapon’s recoil was too powerful for her to control.
A horrible tragedy, right? Not only is a man needlessly dead, but a little girl is permanently scarred. The lesson to be learned is clearly not to give automatic weapons to children. But did we even need to learn that in the first place?
Apparently, yes. The National Rifle Association responded to the event just two days later by tweeting a list of ways that children can “have fun at the shooting range.” The Huffington Post’s Christina Wilkie caught it first, and managed to capture a screenshot of the tweet before it was deleted an hour later.
Because to the NRA, the only proper response to the horrors of gun violence is to tout the joy and wonder of guns. Humanity does not matter. The NRA is a humanity-free zone. As Wilkie
explains:
The Arizona shooting has prompted a heated national debate over what guns are safe for use by minors, even under supervision. Experts agree that an Uzi was the wrong choice for a 9-year-old girl.
The timing of the NRA's tweet appears to be linked to this debate. Anstine's column about children's shooting targets was posted on August 20, almost a week before the Arizona shooting. Why the NRA would decide to push out this column to the more than 7,000 followers of its "NRA Women" account is unclear. The NRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Because guns are so fun, and yet another accidental shooting death by yet another child should not dissuade parents from putting more guns in the hands of more children. To the vultures in the gun industry, anyway.