Please to explain for the hard of understanding...

[glatt]

Well, I think the parents and the instructor were adults, and while this is very tragic, they are capable of making an informed decision. The kid is innocent in all of this. I try not to judge other parents because we are all just trying to do our best, but handing a fully automatic machine gun to a 9 year old girl doesn't seem like a wise thing to do.

There is a small industry 0f these types of places where you can rent equipment that you could never otherwise use. They have race cars you can run around a track for a few laps, heavy construction equipment in big dirt lots that you can rent by the hour just to play, and of course these fairly exotic guns. The whole idea is that novices get to use the real equipment. I think it's a cool idea, but obviously they need to work out a few safety kinks.

At Cub Scout camps here, the under 11 year old can only fire bb guns. But when they join Boy Scouts at age 11-12, they are allowed to fire single bolt action 22 rifles. Once they reach 14, they are allowed to fire shotguns. This is all with close supervision. I think those are more reasonable ages, and even then, you need to make sure the boys firing shotguns are strong enough to hold one.