The answer to the quiz, according to Massachessetts. authorities, apparently is that the organizer of the 2008 machine gun shoot at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club is responsible.
Christopher Bizilj, age 8, died when the Uzi submachine gun he had taken in his small hands suddenly tilted upward and backward as it fired, and a bullet blew off part of his head. The boy’s father, Dr. Charles Bizilj, signed a waiver before letting his son shoot the gun, acknowledging and accepting the risks, including the boy’s death. But law enforcement officials applied the common but ethically-misguided principle of “the crime carries its own punishment” for the devastated father, thus shifting all accountability on the organizer of the shoot, Edward Fleury, who was prosecuted for manslaughter.
A jury has finally found Fleury, 53, not guilty of involuntary manslaughter and multiple counts of furnishing a machine gun to a minor. Meanwhile, fighting the charges for two years, which carried a combined sentence of up to 50 years in prison, has pretty much destroyed the former police chief’s life. Does Fleury share in the blame for what the jury determined was a horrible accident? Absolutely, though he had run the machine gun shoot for many years without incident. Should someone under his supervision have been trained and instructed not to permit a child as young as eight to handle a loaded Uzi, no matter how reckless and irresponsible the child’s father was? No question about it.
Nevertheless, by what possible standards of fairness, common sense and justice is the organizer of the deadly event prosecuted for manslaughter, while the adult with primary responsibility for the safety of his trusting child, the child’s parent, sits in the courtroom as if he had nothing to do with the incident? I understand that sometimes a catastrophe is so unnecessary and outrageous that law enforcement takes the position that somebody has to be held responsible, that society has to see a wrongdoer punished. But this tragedy was the bi-product of many parties and bad judgement everywhere. The employee supervising the Uzi shoot was only fifteen. The Westfield Sportsman’s Club sponsored and advertised the event. Fleury operated it, but the truth is that Christopher Bizilj would be ten years old today if his father hadn’t allowed him to pick up an automatic weapon at the tender age of eight.
If society, in kindness and empathy, decides that the loss of a son is indeed punishment enough for such wretched judgment, that is a defensible choice. Then, however, it is unjust to focus all blame on the other participants, to the extent of trying one of them for manslaughter. Fine them, hold them liable, make certain they never hold such a reckless event again. The father of Christopher Bizilj is still the most culpable one, and prosecuting Edward Fleury only made the consequences of a terrible tragedy worse.
Ethics Alarms 
Maybe I’m insensitive, but what exactly was this father a doctor of where his education was insufficient enough to not hand his prepubescent son a weapon that most people live their whole lives without ever even SEEING? Is that where Dr. Pepper went to school?
You’re the cartoonist! Dr. Doom!
That’s a good analysis, Jack. The final burden must fall on the father, as he signed a waiver. However, the Club owed it, in turn, to provide expert supervision on the firing line. The Range Officer and his subordinates are responsible for preventing unsafe acts on the firing line. Having a young child on that line- unless personally supervised by a range official- is inherently unsafe from the onset. It’s one thing to provide young children with firearms safety instruction (was that even done here?) and, later, closely supervised firing with a low calibre rifle for familiarization. But to place a child in the position of being able to take a loaded automatic weapon in his hands is incredible. It takes a grown man with military experience to understand how to handle such a weapon correctly. Children need to learn the preliminaries to understand that a firearm of any sort is not a toy. Nor could they be expected to safely fire a submachine gun on full auto safely under ANY circumstances. It’s only dumb luck (to a degree) that this poor child didn’t take out half the firing line along with himself.