Who was to blame when 8-year-old Christopher Bizilj accidentally shot himself in the head while firing a mini Uzi at a Massachusetts gun show? Was it the gun club owner, a small-town police chief? Was it the gun dealers who brought a lightweight automatic weapon, not made for hunting but instead manufactured for use by the Israeli army? Was it the 15-year-old who was supervising the boy's shoot? Was it his father, who brought him to the show and allowed him to pick up a gun even professionals say is notoriously hard to handle?
Prosecutors have won indictments for the gun club owner, Pelham (MA) Police Chief Edward Fleury, and the two Connecticut-based gun dealers, Carl Guiffre and Domenico Spano, who brought the Uzi. They are not charging the teenager or the boy's father, whose punishment, we can only imagine, will be lifelong and far worse than anything the courts could hand down.
Knee-jerk anti-gun folks sometimes make me mad; I come from a family that has included fishing and occasionally hunting among its pursuits, and I have a lot of respect for hunters. I grew up taking riflery courses at my summer camp, and loved testing my skills on the rifle range (and I have the NRA-sponsored medals and patches to prove it). But knee-jerk pro-gun folks make me even madder: this was no hunting rifle, no gun that anybody had any business shooting for fun, particularly not a child. With any luck, those indicted this week will serve some jail time -- the penalties for each charge of involuntary manslaughter can range from probation to twenty years imprisonment, plus fines -- but more important, gun shows such as the one that killed Christopher Bizilj will be regulated for improved safety or shut down altogether. Because then at least this hideous, unbearably sad death won't be totally pointless.
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Photo: AP Photo/The Republican, Christopher Evans
