[MineralMan]

"All the other comments focusing on the firearm were trying to figure out whether the article's decription of it might be accurate or not. "

The description was probably _not_ accurate. Most folks don't send 16-year-olds out to do target practice with full-auto firearms without supervision.

That said, that particular weapon lends itself to modification to being full auto capable, as has been pointed out by several folks here.

Bottom line is that these boys were careless with their weapon and a woman was injured. Had that woman been the wife or daughter of one of the posters here, we'd be hearing a different argument. Had the woman been killed, there are plenty of Freepers who would be calling for the death penalty. Had the boys been the children of illegal immigrants, there would be rants about closing the borders.

None of those things are the case. It's a couple of stupid kids, poorly trained in firearms safety, who caused an injury. The weapon didn't cause the injury. The shooter caused the injury.

Again, if it was your wife or daughter who had been shot, I suspect you'd feel differently and the discussion might be a different one.

[GovernmentShrinker]

It's the parent(s) who should be facing criminal charges. If your 13 and 16 year old are this irresponsible, you need to keep the hardware locked up when they're unsupervised.

[dark_lord]

The weapon didn't cause the injury. The shooter caused the injury.

Semantics. The weapon did cause the injury. The shooter was responsible for the injury. It is a semantic waste of time to say guns don't kill people, people kill people. Yeah, but in reality guns, cars, ladders, pails full of water and so forth do kill people, that is they are the direct cause. But as inanimate objects, they don't (usually) do it by themselves. A person is responsible for the inanimate object (in this case, a gun) and is responsible for the injury. Trying to say "guns don't kill people, people kill people" just makes us look like idiots.