L.R., a female reader, writes:

Regarding the story about the nine-year-old girl who accidentally shot an instructor at a Las Vegas shooting range: Not only is it stupid to send children to have fun and practice with guns at those “theme shooting parks” that are supposed to be available for adults (specially for men only!), but it is also even more stupid to send a girl to try to practice such a thing since in reality women are much worse shooters than men!

I grew up with several scifi movies of women soldiers that seemed to know how to use guns and automatic weapons like in the Aliens movies but women are good in movies because they are fantasy. In reality, women and, even more, female teenagers and little girls are bad shooters and don’t have the same coordination as men when using any kind of guns.

This is why also we see so many funny but real videos of women and girls being bad drivers with their cars on youtube.

I think women were at least a little better gunners in the time of the Old West when they had the obligation to learn how to use guns and ride horses like any cowboy since many of them would not always find a man to protect them and do the hard and dangerous work for them.

— Comments —

Kentucky Packrat writes:

L.R. should stop projecting.

I am married to a woman whose shooting accuracy and ability exceed my own, and I’m a reasonably good amateur. I’ve taught women and girls to shoot guns as “small” as .22 LR all the way up to large 9MM pistols (and know others who shoot .40s, .45s, and .357s). When my daughter was eight years old, she had little problem controlling either my Beretta 92FS or my wife’s Smith and Wesson 9mm; they were just uncomfortably large in her hands and she couldn’t safely work the slide to load the pistol. (On the other hand, she LOVED her Colt .38 revolver she inherited from her grandmother. She still does.)

Mr. Vacca and the girl’s parents were negligent (but NOT criminally so) in allowing a nine-year-old girl to shoot an Uzi full-auto. There are several full-auto firearms that are easy to control and manage for a person with a small frame. The Uzi isn’t one of them; it is notorious for being a pain to control in the strongest and most experienced of hands. If she absolutely wanted to shoot a full auto, she should have been given a long gun (MP5, AR-15, etc.) with 3 or 4 shots in the magazine, and shown how to deal with the gun recoil before given a full magazine.

This is a unique situation that’s was a fail (and a fatality) for the instructor, not for teaching girls how to shoot.

J.R. writes:

Poppycock! My just turned 13-year-old daughter is a fine shooter and participated in a shooting competition several months ago and no, she is not a gun-crazy girl acting like a boy,  Although she competed in the youth category she did outshoot half the grown men there. Do I think women should try to act like men? Heaven forbid! However, learning to shoot is something I think all people (that want to) should learn to do; men AND women. Anybody, going into shooting, thinking that it will be just like the movies is in fantasy land and I would stay far away (and we have) from somebody with that mentality.

As far as the nine-year-old girl shooting an Uzi, my husband says it takes a lot of control to hold it steady at fully auto, so it sounds like the instructor was not thinking that through and unfortunately paid with his life.

Abigail writes:

L.R.’s comments on the story of the accident at the shooting range illustrate why your blog and your readers lack credibility in your views as to women’s abilities. It seems that you or your readers leap on any isolated disaster in which a girl or a woman played a role to say, “Aha! See, this shows women shouldn’t do X, Y, or Z.”  But I can probably find you hundreds of stories of men and boys involved in shooting accidents.  And there is no evidence whatsoever that this accident had anything to do with the fact that the child was a girl.

I believe the prevailing theory is that the recoil caused the gun to fly over her head after she fired. She simply lacked the strength to hold onto the Uzi after firing.  This is not due to her sex because strength differences between the sexes do not come into play until puberty.  A little boy would have had the same problem.  The issue here was not the girl’s sex but the fact that she is a child.  And the fault surely lies with the instructor for not thinking through the situation or monitoring it properly.  Yet, though he happens to have been a man, I would never suggest that his sex was at all relevant here, because it wasn’t.

 Laura writes:

Boys have better eye-hand coordination than girls, so it is not just a question of strength or of mindlessly leaping on a story that involves a girl doing something masculine. In terms of the accuracy, for instance, of ball-throwing, boys have demonstrably greater control over the ball. That is not to say that girls are incapable of shooting or shouldn’t ever learn to shoot a gun or that some girls aren’t excellent sharp shooters, but L.R. makes a valid generalization in stating that shooting is something they generally do less well, both because of lesser interest in guns and poorer eye-hand coordination. That does not mean that this general rule was the determining factor here. In this case, the instructor does appear to have had poor judgment.

Shannon writes:

 Does L.R. truly believe that men are inherently better shots with a firearm than women? I would very much like to see some sort of evidence that this is true. And even if this is the case, I don’t think that the logical conclusion is to make a claim that women are “bad shooters” and that it is “stupid” for women to ever use a gun. If, as she claims, women are worse shots than men, wouldn’t they need more practice rather than none to improve their aim?

I am a 29-year-old mother of three very young children under 5. While I do have a husband who I’m sure would protect our little family with one of our firearms should the need arise, he feels very strongly (as do I) that we would be fools if I did not become familiar with our guns and get as much practice as I possibly can with our guns to get to be the best shot I can possibly be. Last weekend I took the class to get my Concealed Handgun License in Texas. Think about it. When I am out alone with my three children, I am absolutely defenseless. I could possibly pick up two children and run away from a threat, but I most certainly could not pick up three children and run away. If someone is going to try and harm me or one of my children, I will not lie down and take it. I wish we lived in a culture where all the gentlemen around me carried guns, and would defend me in a situation where me or my children were at risk of serious harm or death, but sadly that is not the case.

It is perhaps because I am a woman, and in every case incapable of overpowering a potential aggressor, that I feel it is important (for me) to know how to shoot a gun well.

I’m actually quite curious what you, Laura, have to say on this subject.

 Laura writes:

I think it is safe to say that men are generally better shooters than women, but that doesn’t mean that women should never learn to use guns for self-defense. Unfortunately, you have good reason to learn how to use a gun. I just hope you don’t take your young children to shooting ranges on vacation.

John writes:

I always thought this poster by Oleg Volk thought-provoking if not downright poignant:

Karl D. writes:

I think we can all agree that putting an Uzi in the hands of a nine-year-old girl (instructor or no instructor present) is a bad idea.

As a Conservative, a Pro- Second Amendment person and a gun owner, I must say I find places like “Burgers & Bullets” and their ilk to be in bad taste and consider them to be pretty low brow and not very helpful to the cause. As for young kids using guns, especially little girls and women? Like as has been stated previously. It all depends on the weapon and the caliber. Just today I was at the range and fired off a 30-30 and a 12 gauge shotgun. Even in the hands of a grown man those weapons kick hard. Especially the shotgun! It kicks like a mule and sounds like a canon going off. My shoulder is still sore! Its a very violent and loud experience. I couldn’t imagine putting a child behind either of those, and I imagine not many adults would do so. Even for a young teenager a 12 gauge shotgun with 00 buckshot would be a challenge. Never mind a slug round!

Buck writes:

I was surprised to see this story posted here. I honestly don’t know, but I was.

My first reaction when I read about this accident, was that the instructor, who was said to be very experienced and to have had long demonstrated his competence and expertise, simply made a tragic mistake. He had some kind of lapse in judgement and focus and it caused him to mis-handle HIS weapon. It only takes one slip, one second, one lapse.

All that I thought of the unlucky young girl’s role was how tramatic it had to be for her and her parents. She, like any one else, should have been irrelevent to the outcome of the exercise.

Absolutely everything that took place in that shooting station, from the second that that young girl entered into it, was on the instructor; everything. He was totally responsible for that Uzi, for every move it made. No one else should have had any effect on the outcome of events, especially not a tiny nine-year old girl. She was an innocent bystander to a tragic workplace accident. An employee had a very bad day. It was tragic, but that instructor did nothing less than shoot himself in the head.

Laura writes:

My initial reaction was also that it must have been — and be — awful for all involved. As for how the instructor handled it, I don’t know enough to say. But it seems foolish to put an automatic weapon like that in the hands of a nine-year-old, whether it is a girl or a boy.

L.R. writes:

I want to apologize for my way of expressing the recent news of the little girl shooting. You, Miss Laura, would have expressed my opinion far better than I did!‏

The way I express my opinion on that news was not correct one or the correct way to say so. I think it is because I have suffered many traumas and abnormal abuses since birth and I cannot control my anger very well.

I should had simply sent you the link and let you write your own opinion about it instead of myself. You have a calm personality and don’t let your emotions control you, just like the way you calmly and rationally handle the left or liberal and GLBTPN people that says hateful things to your blog.

Indeed you are a thinking housewife, I on the other hand …

Laura writes:

There is no need for you to apologize at all. Okay? Now I don’t want you to feel bad one bit because if I didn’t think there was something worth discussing and some merit to what you were saying I wouldn’t have posted it. This blog is a conversation and it’s okay to give your gut reaction to what you read. You saw that story and were upset by it. It struck you as wrong that a girl should be handling an automatic weapon. I think you were right about that. I think it is also true that a nine-year-old boy shouldn’t be practicing with an Uzi. Also, what you suggested about the relative spatial and eye-hand skills of women and men is true.

John writes:

The story of Annie Oakley comes to mind here.  When at age fifteen she met the touring champion Frank Butler in a match, he was amused that a pipsqueak of a girl carrying a shotgun would dream of challenging him. Of course, she beat him.  She was one of the best shots in the world.  Her ascent to the top of the sport has to be weighed against the fact that very few women engaged in such competitions at the time.  Women are not the equal of men in many physical areas, but this is not true of shooting.  To say that many women may not wish to shoot, and that they cannot shoot, are two different things.

You can read about her life here.

Laura writes:

Annie Oakley is not proof that women in general are as good at shooting as men. Please, she is one example and of course there are always exceptions. It is well documented that men have superior spatial skills and eye-hand coordination than women. You can simply Google these phrases and you will find some of the many studies that document this. But, again, that does not mean women in general are not capable of shooting accurately or that no women can excel in marksmanship or that women can’t benefit from practice and training.

Tyro writes:

Young children do not have the strength to handle the recoil of an automatic weapon. In Massachusetts in 2011, an 11-year-old boy killed himself while shooting an Uzi at a gun expo due to the recoil moving the gun upwards towards his face.

Girls tend to have well developed fine motor skills at a young age and can be good shooters. Girls have participated in rifle and pistol events for decades. The Olympic shooting events were mixed until women began winning medals, at which point the events were split into men’s and women’s events.

 Dan R. writes:

Breathless CNN host Isha Sesay interviews highly-regarded gun instructor Claude Werner.

Abigail writes:

Annie Oakley is indeed only one example. But I notice in your blog that when a woman excels, she is said to be an exception to the general rule, whereas a woman who fails is held up as an example of the alleged deficits of her sex in general — an intellectually dishonest double standard.

Laura writes:

Baloney.

I always refer to some general rule of male and female behavior, rooted in nature, and ideals, also rooted in natural differences. Men do not excel at many of the things at which women excel.

Eric writes:

As a seasoned Concealed Handgun Permit instructor, I can tell you the difference between the men and the women:

The women listen to me when I tell them what to do. They will kindly take suggestions to improve their shooting, and they generally shoot at least sufficiently after that. I just make sure to screen out for the “crazy” gene than infects some of them, and the rest are good to go! (As an experienced policeman, I can see “crazy eyes” a mile away now, and politely suggest not taking the class, for everyone’s safety!)

As for the men, some are good shots already, and I really do know shooting training, and just let them shoot to qualify. The ones that are not already good shots can be more difficult to teach than the women, because they have grown up and developed bad habits from playing with toy guns and stuff like that. Many are also reluctant to take instruction from me about how to improve their skills. Some of these guys are tough to re-train!

So, like intelligence, it seems that women stay more towards the center of the bell curve in shooting skill, and the men have a flatter curve with longer tails on either end, at least with their pistol skills.

My wife likes shooting with me. She is an ex-Army nurse who can shoot a rifle pretty well.

Marissa writes:

Eric makes a good point – women seem to be much more obedient in public under a clear authority figure. A man probably needs to develop rapport with another man in authority over him before being so easily obedient, which is a good thing.

Tyro writes:

There are more than 300 million people in this country, and there will always be millions of people whose skills at something will vastly exceed my own. If I refrained from participating in activities because I would never “excel” at them at that level, I would never do much at all. The girl who diligently practices and concentrates on her shooting skills will always beat out those who do not approach the activity with the same amount of discipline. While few women will ever become world champion shooters, the reality is that few men ever will do so, either, and that doesn’t stop them from taking up the sport.

Self-discipline and mastery of a skill is a fun and engaging process. The number of women (or men) who have little talent or capacity to become competent shooters (or runners or backgammon players) is exceeding small. And in a country of 300 million people, the absolute number of those who can become quite good at those sorts of skills (say the top 5%) is huge.

The key is age and training appropriateness. Nine-year-olds shouldn’t be shooting Uzis just as they shouldn’t be running marathons, piloting planes, or mountain climbing.

Laura writes:

You suggest in your first paragraph that someone here is arguing that women should never shoot guns! That was not L.R.’s point and I have not argued that.

Bert Perry writes:

Go figure that the topic of guns would be so big.  :-)

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