...I think this translates fairly well to guns, or any potentially harmful machine. In this case, the guardians and trainer of the child failed to properly protect her from her inexperience. As a result, the trainer is dead and the child has severe emotional trauma that she has to get past.
In short, everyone got complacent and didn't set the girl up for success. They lost respect for the potentially deadly tool. The instructor also positioned himself poorly. I've taught a lot of new shooters how to operate a firearm and shoot. The only time I'll stand near the left shoulder of a right-handed shooter is when we are working on dry-fire practice. Just the nature of biomechanics, all the shooter has to do is to bend their dominant elbow and/or flex their wrist and you're catching a shot to your body somewhere. Once there is live ammo, I'm behind their dominant shoulder. Depending on what's going on, I may be reaching forward to help stabilize and control the firearm from the dominant side from behind the shooter's dominant arm. My non-dominant arm can be used to help support the shooter's shoulder from behind, but isn't needed if proper training is given up to that point.
This is a terrible tragedy and it's unfortunate the child has to go through life with mental scars because of the poor decisions by the adults who were responsible for her at the time of the accident. Luckily, accidental firearm deaths are extremely rare with only 606 in 2010 vs. 35,322 automotive fatalities....or even 3,782 by accidental drowning. It's still important to remember to respect any potentially deadly machine and to not become complacent around it.
But to me, the only person I can think to blame is the instructor. The instructor is there primarily to ensure safety, and in this case he tragically failed miserably.
True and the truth of the matter is....... he was a very POOR instructor.
I do left young kids, even younger than her shoot my MGs... well my Heavy Maxim MG. Its 100lbs on a Sled Tripod completely locked in. I can shoot it with my little finger like that...