Are They Ready For An Uzi?
There is a simple test to find out if your child is ready to fire an UZI:
Buy a 22 ounce framing hammer, a pound of 10d box nails, and a couple of 2X4s. When the child can consistently drive the nails into the doubled 2X4s they have the grip and wrist strength to hold and control an UZI.
Now, buy them a tennis racquet and send them to the ‘Y’ for lessons, because playing tennis is a lot more useful than shooting automatic weapons.
I have fired an UZI and it sucks. I have small hands and the weapon requires really big hands to control with confidence. The military UZIs I fired had folding stocks, which even if not extended added the weight to help to control the tendency of the weapon to jump. I fired it at hip height with my left hand gripping on the top to keep the rounds within the same Zip code as the range.
The US Army replaced the full automatic of the M-16 with the burst mode of the M-4 because full automatic was a good way to waste ammo without increasing effectiveness.
If you must have a weapon that fires a lot of bullets in a short span of time, buy a 12 gauge shotgun and use 00 buck shot – it’s the equivalent of firing about 9 rounds of 9MM with every pull of the trigger, a better hit pattern, and a cheaper cost to own. It also doesn’t require a $250/year Federal license like an automatic weapon.
11 comments
A 12 gauge isn’t any more fun to fire a lot of rounds out of. A box of shells out the tube and your shoulder is going to be black and blue for the next week.
I’ve seen fairly young kids fire fairly big guns successfully, but not without a lot of work to get there. You don’t just hand a kid an Uzi and say “here, let rip with it!”. This is the second time I’ve heard of an idiot doing so and getting gunned down, in one case it was a girl’s uncle and, startled by the gun, she turned to her uncle to ask what to do… without removing her finger from the trigger. Should say *former* uncle. Oops!
I don’t get the attraction of shooting something like that, to tell you the truth. I put enough rounds through my 12 gauge to know how it operates and how to get it back down on target after letting off a round, but that’s all. Doing it on a regular basis for “fun” seems like too much work to me, given the fact that it kicks like a frickin’ mule. (I don’t trust semi-automatic shotguns, they have a bad habit of jamming at the wrong time, so mine is a good ole’ Mossberg pump).
I have a Remington 870 Bushmaster, which is the better looking civilian version of the standard police shotgun in New York. Rifle sights and a 20-inch barrel that is designed for deer slugs and buck shot in areas where rifles aren’t allowed.
The advantage of a shotgun as a defensive weapon is that you rarely have to fire it, just having it is enough. You work the slide on an 870 and most of the sane world decides to become peaceful, law-abiding citizens.
We go through 25 rounds of 12 gauge in requalification. You learn to hold that beast hard against your shoulder.
I watched the video and saw the ‘instructor’ change the selector. After the way the child reacted to the single action shot, he should have adjusted her grip, and then had his left hand above the UZI to catch it if switched to auto. I fired the larger military version and it still climbed like crazy.
If they want to fire automatic weapons, let them fire a belt-fed on a tripod with stops in place to control elevation and sweep. It’s a hell of a lot safer.
My Mossy dates to before variable choke barrels. I keep the short open choke barrel on it for close quarter use. And yeah, it’ll kick you over if you don’t keep it tight on your shoulder, but even so, firing a lot of rounds out of it will make your shoulder black and blue because that’s just how 12 gauge shotguns kick.
I just don’t “get” people who fire high-kick weapons for *fun*. A .22 plinking rifle, maybe. But that’s a different beastie altogether (albeit still capable of killing if you hit the right place with it). And handing a high-kick weapon to a kid with no warning about what to expect and no instruction about how to deal with it? Sigh…
I also have my Mother’s 16 gauge Mossberg which would be a lot less brutal, but it has a standard birding barrel and is a bit ungainly in close quarters, but still nothing to mess with.
I got more bruises being trained how to hold the 12 gauge than actually firing it. Mine has the rubber cushion, not the steel butt plate, so it’s a bit kinder to you. I would still prefer to fire it at hip height with the butt against a door frame if I had to use it, but it would make a major mess if a fool pushed things to that point.
I learned to shoot with a Savage .22 pump, so I prefer pump long arms.
We had more than one officer with a .44 magnum ‘dimple’. That’s the wound on your forehead from the blade sight of the revolver caused by not locking your elbows when you fire the beast. Although I carried a .357 magnum, it was loaded with .38+P because that got the job done if you hit what you were aiming at which was more likely with the +P than the magnum load. If you needed something with more punch, you used the shotgun.
Yeah. Uzi’s are not for kids. They have a bad kick among other things. My grandfather started me on a Ruger .22. When I could confidently hit the target 9 out of 10, he gave me his Weatherby Mk IV to try. I thought I’d broken my shoulder! Had a 500 gn .460 round, which was half it’s max load (1,000 gn). Grandad made his own ammo (he was an Armorer in WW2). Good thing he cut the load, I would have busted my shoulder! He wanted to teach me a lesson because I kept nagging him about when I got to use a real gun and not a toy! I learned my lesson. 🙂
I and my team had to qualify on a couple dozen or so projectile weapons in M/I. all of our inventory, and the most common we were likely to face in the field. Some were easy to learn, others took more work. Shotgun’s were the easiest. 🙂 We used the military variant of the Remington 870 (Mk 1) with an 8 round mag & bayonet mount. It wasn’t bad. 🙂
We even got to play with the Mk 19 AGL (Automatic Grenade Launcher)! Nasty sucker! Firing a 40mm grenade at 40 rounds/min (sustained) up to 2.2 km max (though the sight was only ranged to 1.5 km). How would you like to see one of those in the hands of the typical NRA moron? The way things are going… It’s only a matter of time.
Kryten, I don’t have the slightest doubt that there is at least one moron in the US with an AGL, and probably hundreds with RPGs. The saving grace is that they aren’t competent enough to make the ammo, which is not as easy to get as the weapon.
If there is a total breakdown the people who can make their own bows and arrows, or have muzzle-loaders and can make black powder, are the people with the long term advantages.
These are tools and like all tools they have specific uses for specific situations. Some of these people would call in an airstrike to kill a rabbit.
If the zombies attack… can I hang with you guys?
Hmm, that brings up a zombie joke:
Q: If you are what you eat, why are zombies so stupid?
A: They manage to catch only the below-average people. And average ain’t so smart, average is more like S-M-RT (see YouTube for what I’m talking about, alas, putting the link triggered the spam plugin, sigh).
I don’t think you have any problems in that regard, Ellroon ;).
Meanwhile, regarding the shotgun and bruises, I have a box of 25 shotgun shells sitting on my dresser that needs to be fired off because they’ve hit their expire-by date. My shoulder aches thinking about it, because I’m always beat up after firing off a box. I can’t understand people who do that for fun…
You can’t shoot zombies in Florida, Ellroon [one of the few things on the no-kill list]. Down here they are called ‘Born Again’ and they vote for incumbents, so they are protected. We have two of them running for governor this year.
You need to make a shoulder pad from some sheet steel with neoprene foam on the back, Badtux. Even with the rubber butt pad, I took an old soccer shin guard with me to qualification. Deer slugs and buck shot come in 5 round boxes.
They actually make a recoil pad that’ll replace the old rubber butt pad that has a better foam on it. Occasionally I think about buying it, because I know that it’ll feel better than shooting the gun with the rubber butt pad. But then I forget about it until next time I take out the gun to “re-qual” with it…
I always swore I was going to buy a shooting coat before the next qualification, but the shin guard spread the hit and absorbed it. The butt would slide off the shoulder strap of my vest causing the recoil to impact the joint itself, which was really painful. I had to remove the vest for qualification or end up wearing an ice pack for two days.
The new pad looks good.