Massachusetts law prohibits furnishing a child with a machine gun. That sounds like a sensible law, one that a vast plurality of people with disparate views on gun laws could meet in the middle on.
Some things are so obvious that a law shouldn’t be necessary. But when operators of a “Machine Gun Shoot” at a gun fair in Western Massachusetts let an eight-year-old fire an Uzi, the consequence was the death of the boy, Christopher Bizilj. The “kick” from the automatic weapon brought the barrel up to the child’s face instantly when he pulled the trigger on an October day in 2008.
The New York Times yesterday reported that the judge in the trial of the operator of the Machine Gun Shoot that led to Christopher’s death has ruled that a video of the accident can be shown to the jury. That video should be shown to every parent in America, too.
Sometimes the almighty dollar can get in the way of common sense. Edward Fleury, the former police chief of Pelham, Massachusetts, set up the rules of his gun fairs, and the rule for the Machine Gun Shoot at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club on October 26, 2008 allowed eight-year-olds like Christopher to shoot machine guns at his events.
Who are the people who make quick profits putting weapons into the hands of people they know very well might not be safe to sell weapons to? You can watch those characters, in video that was shot undercover at gun shows by Colin Goddard, who was shot four times at Virginia Tech University on April 16, 2007 and then became an advocate for requiring background checks on guns sold by private sellers at gun shows.
Colin’s remarkable journey from victim to lobbyist is the subject of a powerful 40-minute documentary, Living for 32, that was just accepted to the Sundance Film Festival’s Short Film competition. You can see a trailer for the film at the film’s website, or read Executive Producer Maria Cuomo Cole’s conversation with Colin on her blog on the subject.
The name of the film comes from Colin’s comments saying he became an advocate for the gun show legislation in honor of the 32 students and teachers who died that Virginia Tech. Surely, Christopher Bizilj’s death should convince us all that, laws or no laws, eight year olds should not be given machine guns.
The operators of the Machine Gun Shoot did, his defense lawyers say, go to the terrifically responsible step of recommending only appropriate machine guns for eight-year-olds. What an altruistic group. I’m sure the jury in the trial which began last week will be very moved by that defense. – except for jurors who have, or have ever had, an eight-year-old child. If you watch your eight-year-old eat supper, or shoot basketballs, or do his or her homework, you might develop a basic family rule that shooting a machine gun can wait.
To be fair to Chief Fleury, his defense does make a point worth discussing when they say that the child’s father, Dr. Charles Bizilj, holds some accountable in the tragic death as well, because Christopher had his permission to fire the gun. That’s a valid argument. In fact, the “Dr.” before Bizilj’s name leaps off the pages of a newspaper at you as an incredible irony, like the old textbook example of a poorly written headline, Man Helps Dog Bite Victim. As someone who is also the father of an eight-year-old, however, I will leave it at that, understanding the torment that Dr. Bizilj must know he’ll deal with for the rest of his life.
We don’t need new gun laws in this country, some people say. That would be true if everyone exercised appropriate responsibility, if everybody would live their lives with rules like “don’t give a machine gun to an eight-year-old” and “don’t sell guns without background checks.” But because of profit-driven businessmen like Edward Fleury and the private sellers at gun shows – and to help backstop parents who make tragic wrong choices – we do, in fact, need some new gun laws.
Peter Hamm served as Communications Director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence for seven and a half years until he left the organization last month.
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