[hga]

I haven't watched this, but I'll note two facts:

There are about 100,000 full auto weapons legally owned by civilians in the US.

There are 3 known crimes that have been committed using a legally owned one, but two don't exactly count: one was by a cop and the most recent was that insane case of criminal negligence where a pre-teen was handed a Micro-Uzi and allowed to fire it without an adult helping.

I wouldn't fire a Micro-Uzi without slowing working up to the point where I was sure I could handle it. One parent on a gun politics mailing list that I'm on who owns full auto weapons and who let his kids fire them emphasizes how he makes sure he has a "death grip" on the weapon to ensure it stays under control.

That said, the large number of people who've fired rented or borrowed full auto weapons at events like Knob Creek without incident shows it's not terribly dangerous.

[CWuestefeld]

I agree with the point you're trying to make, but I don't think it's a fair argument to discount the negligent pre-teen. The fact that you and other responsible adults would never allow this to happen really doesn't change the fact that someone did allow it, so it's an honest data point.

Even so, 2 out of 100,000 compares quite favorably to the proportion of automobiles that have been used in violation of the law, or 1040 forms that have been used similarly.

[hga]

I discount it as a "true crime", it wasn't someone using his weapon to shoot someone with malice, it was a criminally negligent accident. E.g. if you bundled someone of the same age into a running car and let them have at it on your own property we wouldn't say that had anything to do with driver's licenses, if the vehicle was properly registered with up to date license plates/tags, etc.

Heck, a Micro-Uzi is essentially a big handgun, you should never give a handgun to someone that young without intense training and supervision. I started shooting long guns in kindergarten but was a teen before my father started me on handguns (other more handgun oriented parents have started their children on handguns earlier; Massad Ayoob's daughter was winning competitions as some insane age like 7 or 9).

And that's 100,000 over decades; the law dates back to FDR's first year or so in power and the number was frozen by another law in 1986.