Family Of Gun Instructor Killed By 9-Year-Old Girl With Uzi Files Lawsuit Against Firing Range

The family of a gun instructor who was killed while trying to teach a 9-year-old girl how to fire an Uzi has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the gun range that employed the instructor according to Yahoo!. According to the children of the slain gun instructor, they believe the gun range was responsible for their father’s death due to a policy that allowed fully automatic weapons, like the Uzi, to be in the hands of children over 8-years-old.

Charles Vacca was a gun instructor at the Arizona business called Bullets and Burgers, aka Arizona Last Stop Gun Range, in August of 2014, when a family on vacation stopped in for some fun. According to a statement by the 9-year-old’s father, the family had just come back from a monster truck ride when they decided to try the gun range. The father was the first one to shoot the Uzi under the instruction of Vacca. Vacca, who had been a gun instructor at the range for about a year-and-a-half, then allowed the 9-year-old girl to shoot the Uzi. The mother, who was filming the gun lesson with her phone, was stunned when the recoil of the fully automatic Uzi proved to be too much for the 9-year-old’s hands and the muzzle of the gun suddenly pointed in the direction of Vacca, a bullet striking the instructor in the head.

The fatal shooting of the gun instructor raised new concerns regarding fully-automatic weapons. Fully-automatic Uzis made, sold, and owned before the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act meant that the gun range legally had a right to have the weapon at its disposal, and their policy on allowing children access to firearms was quite lax. Children over eight were permitted to fire a machine gun, like the Uzi, with the aid of a gun instructor, as long as a parent was present.

After seeing the video, firearms experts criticized the gun instructor for his tactics, stating that Vacca should’ve been aware of the excessive recoil of the Uzi and been standing behind the 9-year-old with his hands helping her direct the shot. Vacca’s children, however, want to know why and how a fully-automatic weapon like the Uzi was allowed in the hands of a child in the first place, stating it was the gun range’s policy that placed Charles Vacca in harm’s way.

“I’d like to see someone take responsibility for what happened to my dad. They let this happen. If they don’t change something, it’s going to happen again,” 17-year-old Ellie Vacca told ABC News regarding the death of her gun instructor father, Charles.

Vacca’s family has also been proactive in the political arena as the driving force behind a petition to keep fully automatic weapons like the Uzi out of the hands of children under the age of 15. Vacca’s family feels that, despite the fact that gun range deaths are a rarity, this policy change could prevent other gun instructors from being in the same predicament their father faced.

One thing the gun instructor’s family has been adamant about, however, is that they do not blame the 9-year-old in the death of Charles Vacca. Just a month after the death of the gun instructor, Charles Vacca’s four children filmed a video message for the 9-year-old girl, according to CBS News.

“You’re only 9-years-old,” Vacca’s son tells the girl, “We think about you. We worry about you. We pray for you and we wish you peace. Our dad would want the same thing.”

Vacca’s daughter then goes on to say, “Our dad would want you to know that you should move forward with your life. You should not let this define you. You should love yourself.”

Charles Vacca was 39-years-old at the time of his death, and was a sergeant in the Army Reserve. Before becoming a gun instructor, Vacca served tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Photo by John Locher/AP]