• CobblerScholar@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How about you don’t let the kid play anywhere near a shooting range let alone leave the possibility for them to drive right onto it with an ATV. It sounds more like reckless manslaughter rather than an accident to me

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It wasn’t a shooting range. That part of Arizona is pretty rural, and it looks like they rolled onto some land where people were doing target practice. Not uncommon for a rural community.

      • ultranaut@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This is exactly how I ended up getting shot at while hiking. A bunch of drunk assholes decided to do target practice without checking what was down range, or they just didn’t care that they were shooting towards a trail. Either way, bullets were hitting trees near us so we took off running back the way we came.

        • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          From what the video on the report seems to imply, it looks like the kids took their ATV on private property that their parents told them not to go on.

          Still though, ATVs aren’t silent. The fact that they kept shooting wasn’t smart at all.

          • Fosheze@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            If you don’t want to go deaf really quickly you should be wearing ear protection while shooting. If they were then I doubt they could have heard the ATV. If they weren’t wearing hearing protection then they were probably too deaf to hear anything anyways.

              • Fosheze@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Ah. The bigger air rifles aren’t that common in the US (because you could just get a normal rifle almost as easily) so I was assuming it was a regular rifle. Yeah, the shooter should have definitely noticed then.

                Obviously we don’t have all the details but to hit the kid center of mass and kill him with an air rifle it seems hard to belive that was entirely accidental. A .22 air rifle only has an effective range of about 50 yards. There’s no way the shooter didn’t see the kid when they pulled the trigger let alone hear the ATV. I’m wondering if the shooter deliberately shot at the kid for trespassing thinking an air rifle wouldn’t do any real damage. A lot of people don’t realize how much damage air rifles can do. At the same time though .177 is the normal target shooting air rifle caliber and the most common one. The only reason you would specifically buy a .22 caliber air rifle is for hunting so the shooter should have known what it was capable of.

            • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              People might have been wearing it, but it was an air rifle. Those have a solid bang, but they are nothing like a real fire arm.

    • assembly@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s pretty common in AZ that off-road trails where you take vehicles double as target practice areas. On the side of a trail will be an area with backstops (basically the side of a mountain or just dirt hills) where people setup targets and shoot. The desert is a big place out there but there are also a lot of random dirt bikes and ATVs around. Supposed to be the responsibility of the people doing target shooting to watch out for people.

        • assembly@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          As an off road enthusiast, it is always super sketchy how there are random folks with guns shooting as I pass by. They have their backs to the trails so are shooting away but still, you can sometimes spot them with a case of beer lining up their empties. Ain’t no one going to say anything to them so I imagine that is a reason it is so prolific.