Local Instructor Says Girl in Arizona Did Nothing Wrong

A video of the moments leading up to Monday’s shooting shows the instructor, Charles Vacca, telling the girl, "All right, full auto." She braces the gun and opens fire at the target, but the recoil wrenches the weapon upward and the instructor was shot in the head and killed. The shooting isn’t seen on the video.

Roger Caplinger of Gun Ho Range in Pass Christian says, “Obviously, that was too young of a female to be able to handle an automatic weapon and he was basically in front of her when she shot him.”

Caplinger has been a firearms instructor for 15 years and was disappointed by what he saw in the video. He says, “I mean, he’s now ruined this young girl’s life and he’s ruined his family’s life for basically a very amateur move.”

Caplinger doesn’t know of any law in Mississippi which would prevent a child from firing an automatic weapon. Caplinger also says, “You need to have experienced people who are actually using these weapons. That’s the general rule of thumb, is that you don’t start handing weapons to people that can’t handle those weapons.”

The incident in Arizona has raised questions about whether a nine year old child should be allowed to fire a gun. Caplinger thinks so.

He closes, “Yeah, we have children that come to this range with adults. We have children that we give instruction to, but we do it on a case by case basis. I mean, the little girl didn’t do anything wrong in this video. She didn’t do anything wrong.”