Furious beyond words.

Boy, 8, killed in Mass. gun show accident

An 8-year-old boy died after accidentally shooting himself in the head while firing an Uzi submachine gun under adult supervision at a gun fair.

The boy lost control of the weapon while firing it Sunday at the Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo at the Westfield Sportsman's Club, police Lt. Lawrence Vallierpratte said.

Police said the boy, Christopher Bizilj (Bah-SEAL) of Ashford, Conn., was with a certified instructor and called the death a "self-inflicted accidental shooting."

As the boy fired the Uzi, "the front end of the weapon went up with the backfire and he ended up receiving a round in his head," police Lt. Hipolito Nunez said. The boy died at a hospital.

The boy's father and older brother were also there at the time, a gun club member and school official said. Francis Mitchell, a longtime member and trustee of the club, said he was told the boy's father was supporting his son from behind when the shooting happened.

Although the death appeared to be an accident, officials were investigating.

It is legal in Massachusetts for children to fire a weapon if they have permission from a parent or legal guardian and are supervised by a properly certified and licensed instructor, Lt. Hipolito Nunez said. The name of the instructor helping the boy was not released.

Ladies & Gentlemen, years ago, when I was a young infantryman who did 50+ push ups a day, could climb a 40' free hanging rope, and regularly wandered around Fort Benning carrying an 80lb rucksack, I fired an Uzi SMG.

I could barely control the muzzle climb on the freaking thing. Even with the stock extended, good traction on both the pistol grip and foregrip, three solid points of support, the muzzle bucked up with a five-round burst.

What the HELL was anyone thinking allowing an EIGHT-YEAR-OLD to even handle a loaded Uzi? GUNS ARE NOT TOYS, EVEN TO THOSE OF US WHO HAVE FUN SHOOTING THEM!!!! And letting him rip off at full auto? This goes beyond idiocy and right into criminal homicide. Poor Christopher never had a chance. If you've never fired a fully-automatic weapon, your first instinct when it starts bucking and shaking in your hand is to hold on tighter, which means the trigger stays depressed, and recoil bucks the barrel up. With an eight year old's upper arm strength, that weapon came right around with his finger still on the trigger.

Dear old dad should have been holding his son's hands. The instructor should have had the kid fire from a bench rest with a weight on the weapon. Or maybe, just maybe, somebody in that building should have said "this isn't a good idea" and sent them to a weapon on a tripod. (I've seen little kids fire those. All the "wow factor" with non of the problems.)

Should Kirsten and I ever make it up to Oregon for the Full-Auto Shoot, I will make sure that she can handle what she shoots. I do the same for myself.

Pity no one did it for Christopher Bizilj

When Obama is President, let's make sure this question is answered.

Why Has John McCain Blocked Info on MIAs?

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a Special Forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington and even sworn testimony by two defense secretaries that "men were left behind." This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number--probably hundreds--of the US prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

If, and I repeat, IF this is even slightly accurate, then John McCain deserves to be reactivated and given a court-martial. We do not abandon our own. Under any circumstances. To do so is a gross betrayal of the men who trusted their government enough to serve it.

Of course, given McCain's disgusting record on veteran's affairs and supporting the troops I sadly can see where McCain could get off on leaving his buddies behind. He got his, after all.

OK, enough with the angry.

This will make you smile, and unless you're dead, tear up a little.

OK, this made me laugh out loud.

Gamer-Geeks Do Politics

GM: OK, the bugbear attacks you. What do you do?

OBAMA: I send one of my 672 henchmen after it.

MCCAIN: OK, seriously. Why does he have so many henchmen? I'm a level 72 ranger and he's only a level 8 paladin.

OBAMA: Well, if you'd bought the Grassroots Organizing and Oratory/Colgate Smile proficiencies you could min max it so that you...

MCCAIN: Why is he even IN this campaign? I thought this was supposed to be a high level party.

( You enter a 10'x10' ballot box, an orc is guarding a hanging chad. )

It would explain the RED leather jacket...

"We're set up, unlike other states in the union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."

~~ Sarah Palin, noted Communist, in New Yorker interview before she was nominated for Vice-President

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/11/03/081103taco_talk_hertzberg