Who should be held responsible?

The club and instructor should be responsible for his death

Parent and maybe instructor.

Definitely not the club, though.

The Certified instructor should be held responsible for not keeping the gun under control, & the parents should be held responsible for allowing their child to shoot a machine gun.

I'm assuming there are papers to be signed on the responsibilities of the shooter, and those under age, their parents or guardian, had to take responsibility. I believe the parent or guardian, to be responsible for the accident. I'm deeply sorry for the loss of the child.

My children and grandchildren were taught a safety course. There has never been an accident.

No matter who is held responsible by others, the people involved will feel responsible for the rest of their lives.

The club, the instructor, and the parent should all have known better and should all be responsible

I would say the retarded parent for bringing his kid there. To a much lessor extent the instructor and the sports club for being so retarded to allow little kids on the premises.

Gun Laws being what they are in the US, (idiotic) the parents should be held responsible along with the Instructor. The thought of giving a small child an assault weapon is criminally culpable.

They are all responsible because they all had a part to play in this inncident

The kid should also know this was bad- even though he was just eight

Everybody.

Everybody. How awful. And I'm sure everyone involved will be hurting for a long, long time. OMG

Hey, Melf.

I don't know.

Oh hey, how about the people who own the building? Oh, and the people who set up the displays! and lets see... the other people who paid to attend the event. They contribute after all...

This is a tough one but i think that parents may not know whether or not he could handle that specific gun. the instructor should have known. i think the instructor is somewhat responsible for either not paying attention or for not denying the child access to using that gun. really why does an eight yr old need to shoot an uzi. and the club is responsible for whatever rules were in place to allow 8 yr olds to shoot............ accidents do happen but this sounds avoidable to me.

Fail. Fail. Fail.

As much as I like to shoot, and support gun owning rights, I think 8 is a bit young to shoot a full automatic weapon. I started shooting at about 8, but it was a bolt action .22 rifle, I didn't start keeping it in my room and shooting unsupervised until I was 12

Were his parent's present?

I would say the Instructor.

Everyone pretty much... except the 8 y.o. of course.

That's awful. I personally think the parents, instructor and the club all made poor decisions. It sounds like an accident, though, so I don't think anyone should be LEGALLY responible. I do think rules should be changed so that a similar occurence doesn't happen.

The club, instructor, and parent.

Accidents? Cover your floor with razors and eventually someone will cut their foot.

I'm aghast that any one of these persons thought 8-year old kids and Uzis were compatable. Whatever happened to bb-guns? I'm not really fond of those existing either.

My son blew off his head this summer. I've aways been anti-gun, and thought he was too. Apparently he was. His wife got him the shotgun, hoping he'd take up moose hunting with her tribe.

I think it should be illegal to have guns which can be fired by other than the owner, and registered gun owners should be responsible for anything done by their gun, even if it's stolen.

I was totally with you until you said "even if it is stolen"

When something is stolen from you, it is against your will. If someone stole your car and went plowing through a street market with it, should you be held responsible?

The people who own the building probably had little say or knowledge of what was going on there. The club on the other hand hosted the event and is just as responsible as a bar owner which knows minors are sneaking in and allows it, even if it's just the bartender who serves the drink. Even if the instructor thought it was a bad idea, he may not have wanted to go against the policy established by the club he worked for.

As far as people doing displays, that would be more akin to boycotting grapes or beer, their right to do so, and aguably a reponsible action, but nothing that could be expected of them. Their job was creating displays, not deciding 8 year olds should shoot Uzis.

I find it strange that society knows better than to let minors drive cars, but often permits them to shoot guns, something equally deadly, and, considering the media presentation of firearms, requiring even higher discernment as to responsible practices.

~

I'm also aghast that Uzis are even legal anywhere. They serve no responsible purpose, like hunting a deer (my being a vegetarian, I could even take argument with that), and yet have massive potential for abuse.

By the same logic, people should be allowed to build hydrogen bombs at home which they don't actually intend to use, and hopefuly won't go off accidentally. Likewise people could take up creating new genetic strains of ebola as a hobby. Not to kill anyone of course, but for the educational value. Most people will keep it under fairly safe control.

But most murders occur with stolen guns. Anyone who owns a gun should know they tend to get stolen, and guard against it, like keeping their guns in a safe. Registered gun owners are akin to illicit gun importers. Perhaps they don't mean to be, but collectively, they are still the source cause of the guns which kill people.

Some people may only pretend to have guns stolen from them. It's also in the gun industry's interest to have people have their guns stolen so others will buy more guns to defend themselves from these guns.

Stolen guns are different than say stolen cars because they are meant almost exclusively to kill people. Their creation and ownership is a different sort of responsibility. Their potential harm would not be possible without your complicity.

If people are reponsible for their guns under any conditions, people will take much greater care to ensure their guns never become part of the illegal gun problem.

Keeping a gun in a safe kind of defeats the purpose of having one for self defense.

But not doing so only serves to escalate the problem. Societies with gun control are generally safer than those without, even if it does take away a persons right to do self defense with matching firepower. Studies also show that people are more likely to die if they involve a gun in their self defense.

You could look at the matter as self defense, but you could make as strong an argument that anyone who carries a gun is a criminal of sorts, and has purchased a firearm which has no other intent except to kill or maim someone. It may be in the abstract and unconfirmed, but it is premeditated. A preemptive strike is still a strike.

>> Societies with gun control are generally safer than those without

It's an often repeated claim but repetition doesn't make it true. If you limit your set of countries, you can find this correlation. But if you look at all the countries of the world, it's just not true.

The last time I checked, there were 38 states in the United States that allow private ownership of automatic weapons. Automatic weapons made after November 1986 can not be sold into the private sector, which limits transferable automatic weapons to those made before November 1986.
I think the instructor should have had the boy fire single shot for a few rounds, then loaded the weapon with only 3 rounds to let the boy shoot a short burst, then after the boy demonstrates his ability to stay on target, load more rounds into the magazine. All the time standing at the ready to put his hand on top of the receiver of the weapon to stop the fireing and travel. I've done weapons instruction, I still think 8 is too young to handle that weapon, just the same as not letting an 8 year old use a chain saw. You have to be 18 to use a slicer in a deli.

I did have my doubts about that claim, but it not being true doesn't make much sense to me. Are there more knifings in some gun control zones, or is the gun control unsuccessfully implemented? Seems to me, either their are fewer gun deaths, and criminals with guns are on the most wanted list, or they weren't very good at cracking down on guns (or are corrupt, and let it happen). Even if it were knifiings, it seems to me that if you gave those same persons guns, things would be much worse there.

American cinema history seems to imply that disputes were once more frequently handled with fist fights. If that's true, we've become more lax and non-violent a culture, except that that violence has probably been replaced with increased law suits.

I know in some of the countries with strict gun control laws, many of the killings are done with illegal guns. That shouldn't be surprising, i someone is willing to commit murder, illegally possessing a gun doesn't seem that big a deal. So gun control is simply ineffective except in disarming those who aren't the problem anyway. I couldn't tell you if that's the most common situation or not. However, humans were killing each other long before firearms were invented.

As for american cinema history, I don't think I'd place much stock on what I learned from that source.

All the people saying "Let's take this ouside"? However rare, it must have referred to something more popular than never, which is about how often that scene occurs taday.

With sattelites, metal detectors, and such, I think we could get rid of most guns in urban america and reduce gun deaths. These days though I'm not so fond of weapons only existing in the hands of law enforcement. Too often it seems the government is unresponsive to public opinion.

You know the governments are never going to give up guns. Not unless some technology comes along that renders then ineffective or someone invents a personal weapon that's more effective.

There was a time not long ago that London police carried clubs instead of guns.

A couple years ago the police here (LA,CA) shot up a peaceful immigrant rally with rubber bullets, sending even camera journalists to the hospital. It's events like that which make me think perhaps those crazy 2nd ammendmenters aren't so crazy and behind the centuries after all.

One or two more events like 9/11, the wars, or the bailout, especially with a new president supposedly fixing things, and I think the american public will lose their complacency.

And yeah, even Obama changed his position on Afghanistan. It makes me wonder if every viable presidential candidate makes some secret compromise with the defense department to get elected.

If I were president, NASA, the defense industries, and automotive steel would be building solar/wind transcontinental mag-trains, street cars, and mopeds. The same people would get their payoffs, but do something useful.

Michael Moore was just pointing out that we could give 3rd world countries pure drinking water for what we spent in Iraq last month.

Perhaps instead of de-arming people, the answer is to give ever citizen a doomsday machine which they will use if anyone shoots.

> One or two more events like 9/11, the wars, or the bailout, especially
> with a new president supposedly fixing things, and I think the american
> public will lose their complacency.

I'm not so optimistic. I think complacency in the american public is deeply embedded and passivity to what the government says has been well taught.

> Perhaps instead of de-arming people, the answer is to give ever citizen
> a doomsday machine which they will use if anyone shoots.

You ever read about Assassination Politics? It has a couple flaws and is unlikely to ever come about but I sometimes wonder what would happen if it did.

Nope, never heard of it, have no idea what it's about.

You're probably right about the deep seated complacency. A president could probably admit to looting billions these day, and the public would think nothing more of it if he were locked up for a few months. I'm not sure if it's that they don't care, or that they don't think anything can be done about it.

There's a popular radio station station here with a 'Don't Vote' campaign. They give no reasons, but send you to their online 'Don't Vote' video which goes on for a while before switching to reasons to vote. It eventually makes itself out to be sarcasm, of course, but I'm thinking it's the initial statement meant to be heard by this conservative owned station with a liberal audience. ..Akin to the 'Don't Smoke' advertisements produced by the tobacco industry which made people 37% more inclined to smoke.

It kind of leaves me speechless that it's come to such a condition.

Assassination Politics is one guy's idea of what might result if we had the combination of anonymous mass communications (which we do) and anonymous digital cash (not yet). Google the phrase if you're interested.

You're probably right that the public is more resigned than apathetic. It's pretty hard to see how we're going to turn things around and really difficult to see how any individual can have an effect. And of course, people like you and I largely disagree on which way we need to turn around so that makes the situation even more difficult; the politicians are talking about veering five degrees left or right while you want to head straight up and I want to head straight down (no meaning intended for the directions up and down, just that they entirely different from the left-right line that most political pundits talk about).

A new mechanism is required. I have conceived of many, like having deferred rep citizen voting on every decision which crosses a government desk. As an example of this, California citizens might have 7000 reps, folks like Michael Moore, selected to be their individual representing congressperson that week, or on those sorts of issues. Incumbents don't want any change in the system though. Even that plan is at odds with the other thing I feel we need, someone with a comprehensive vision like FDR, that isn't diluted by democratic compromise of every detail.

Even having web sites for every rep which log popular vote and contrast that with reps explanations of why they didn't vote with their constituency would be a start.

Besides differences in ideology, there's also the issue of an informed citizenry. Lately I've been sent a periodical by the Heartland Institute, making itself out to be a scientific ecological journal. While perhaps scientific, it relies almost entirely on despicable half-truths to paint a picture in which oil, coal, and nuclear are our only possible energy solutions. I'm sure many Republican are reading this and believing themselves to be the informed amongst the deluded.

Talking with LDJ after much cautious compasionate probing has revealed to me that even the extreme ups and downs may have more common ground than they realize, not in play in the mainstream. Essentially progressives and conservative libertarian fundamentalists have the same global coporate enemies, and the same desire for locally tailored liberties. She despises communism by name, but after breaking through the vocabulary, it turns out we have similar community values too. So what I'm saying is that part of that resignation is stemming from a belief that all the friges want something different from the status quo, the mainstream, and the other fringes, when that isn't necesarily so.

Also I think we suffer from a media painting where the dividing line between left and right are. They can make group 31-50 and group 51-70 appear to be groups 1-50 and 51-100, leading others (1-30 & 70-100) to believe they are hopelesly on the fringe when they may be as popular as the perceived mainstream, especially if the spectrum is a circle connecting the fringes somewhat.

Most everyone wants better accountability, lack of conflict-of-interest & other corruption, campaign reform and such things, but we don't get it, and resign ourslves to imagining we must be in some minority with our common sense.

I was an activist for years, but eventually retired in some hopeless frustration. I'm a fairly inventive person, and I couldn't come up with anything new and effective, even with a million people willing to join in. Protests and Move-On internet petitions hardly had effect. The network news actually managed to make 15,000 gathered war protestors and a couple hundred war supporters look similar in size.

No one but the boy. Back years ago those who were from the shallow end of the gene pool died off. Now they stay alive and we have so many stupid people out there breeding it is sickening. We need more to eliminate themselves...

Not even close Rose. The police have no responsibility to protect us here. "A State's failure to protect an individual against private violence generally does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause, because the Clause imposes no duty on the State to provide members of the general public with adequate protective services. The Clause is phrased as a limitation on the State's power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security . . ." DESHANEY v. WINNEBAGO CTY. SOC. SERVS. DEPT.

So you need to read the book "Dial 911 and Die". I take it you are of the tree hugger, love everyone, give peace a chance, Lefty Loon persuasion. Well when a criminal breaks into your home, try hugging him and reasoning with him and see how far you get. Better have your will ready.

I taught my sons how to shoot when they were 5. They learned the difference between their toy guns and real guns real quick and never played with real guns unlike kids who never have seen one except on TV. I shot my first gun when I was 3 with supervision of course. So age has no relevance here.

Maybe we should start encouraging people to carry non-lethal forms of self defense?

Can you explain the rationale behind holding establishments responsible for "allowing" this or that to take place on their property? I never thought building/business owners should be considered responsible for what people do to each other inside it. I'm warm to the idea, I can kind of see it, but when I think of how adults should be responsible for their own self and their kids, I don't see it anymore.

If I allow a bunch of people to fight or use drugs in my yard, it's still them using the drugs and fighting. I'm just being passive, doing nothing. How does that make me responsible, just because I own the place?

I am of the tree hugger variety, and have been at gunpoint three times with no change in my tree hugger attitude. I believe faith overpowers such circumstances. I didn't even bother to change what I was doing when everyone else hit the floor.

I also believe every one should be providing an example of utopian thinking. If your example is one of outpowering your enemies, the world will only escalate to some worse position.

I once had a guy following me in the dark shouting insults. When I got into the light of the store, I looked deeply into eyes with love, and he dropped to his knees crying 'bless you, bless you'. People thinking to shoot each other, even in self defense, is entirely contrary to allowing the spirit of a perfect world to flow, and is more akin to fighting a fire with gasoline.

What you say may be true of the legal interpretation of police protection, but it is certainly not in line with the concept by which society created it, unless you see the police as derivative of existing to protect the government rather than the people. Either way, it would make the most sense if they did exist to protect the public.

Like pepper-spray or tasers? People do.

The responsibility of a building owner only exists when they are the tenants or are determining what happens in the building. If a place is a bar, it is the bar owner, and not the landlord 1000 miles away responsible. But then bars are legal, there's no crime in having a bar. If the landlord knowinigly leased to a meth factory, that would be different. It's the responsibility of those running the bar to maintain civil order there.

Leasing a convention hall is a different matter. On one hand it's like leasing a bar or crack factory, some discretion being expected, just as those staging a protest are expected to estimate how out of control a situation may get, and foot some of the bill for maintaining order before getting their permit. On the other hand leasing a convention hall is also like leasing a public facility, and something akin to unbiased allowance of free-speech is expected. You can't lease to some churches and not others without expecting a lawsuit.

If by building owners you mean business owners, the expectation is that someone is king of every castle. If a wild party keeps the neighborhood up at 4am, it is the host which takes the blame. They are seen as sanctioning anything they do not actively strive to prevent.

The law sees people on one side of the fence or the other, condemning or condoning, particularly when it is expected that they are responsible for a premise. If you don't call the police on people doing drugs in your yard, for all they know, you invited them there to do so. The concept is civic duty. Passivity can be seen as being an accessory, as the event would not occur if you took action. You can't expect police stationed everywhere. Citizen cooperation is required to maintain society. Except perhaps for some 3rd world anarchist colonies, places not operating on the premise of civic duty tend to be police states, and even then sometimes higher degrees of civic duty (however unjust) are expected.

It's the old 'you are either for or against us' premise. It's a fair bet that even buddhists in temples harbor opinions of some sort. At least in the U.S. it's more or less understood that our form of society is a majority concensus, not a supposedly unanimous one, as one might find in a church state for instance.

I had a co-worker from the former soviet union. He explained that there were two parallel forms of governance there, the official governance, and the party governance. Officially there was quite a lot of freedom, but within that people were expected to make decisions in line with the party view of things, or risk being seen as a dissident. Cross too far into dissident territory, and you become a powerless outcast. The whole dissident thing begins as early boy/girl scouts. You don't 'have' to join, but if you don't you must be some sort of dissident. Unfortunately we have the same thing crop up here every few decades, going under the term 'un-patriotic'.

If there is to be any form of society, some level of civic duty must exist. The question is how much and in what form. Even to have an anarchy requires a unanimous unenforced decision to not meddle in others affairs.

Do you ever try playing your own devils advocate, arguing to yourself on behalf of the position you are adverse to or not understanding?

> Leasing a convention hall is a different matter.
> On one hand it's like leasing a bar or crack factory,
> some discretion being expected, just as those
> staging a protest are expected to estimate how
> out of control a situation may get, and foot some
> of the bill for maintaining order before getting
> their permit. On the other hand leasing a convention
> hall is also like leasing a public facility, and
> something akin to unbiased allowance of free-speech
> is expected. You can't lease to some churches
> and not others without expecting a lawsuit.

So if you lease to a gun club or some other group where there could be dangerous situations, you are responsible to go over rules with them?

> If there is to be any form of society, some level
> of civic duty must exist. The question is how
> much and in what form.

That's my favorite question on this whole issue. Some amount is necessary. I can agree with that.


>
> Do you ever try playing your own devils advocate,
> arguing to yourself on behalf of the position
> you are adverse to or not understanding?

Sometimes, but then sometimes I can't help but turn that position into a mockery of itself, just to humor myself.

Pretty much the situation for the gun club comes down to whethar or not you are hosting them or just leasing premises to any legal entity. I'm not sure to what extent that's how it legally operates. I suspect responsibility is more intuitively understood than legally defined. It seems sensible enough though that responsibility lies with decision makers. If it is your policy to lease to anyone, you are not operating as a decision maker. If you are church though, and invite the NRA over for your after-service entertainment, that's a decision to host someone. If they cause trouble you're responsible for choosing them instead of a pancake breakfast.

Come to think of it, america is pretty founded in hierarchical structure, and doesn't much even acknowledge the concept of group responsibility. It's always seen as someone's fault. There's an instigator to be found if nothing else.

This is not the first survey to ask 'whos' responsibility something is.

If the parent and kid were at the gun shoot, then the parent should have already made the child aware of respect for the weapon. That's why I voted the way I did.

Suppose it were a zoo though, and it turned out that when you got there the animals weren't in enclosures, but free to gnaw on kids? People generally trust that institutions know what they are doing in these situations, that the animals all have full stomachs, or that the gun instructors know how to ensure kids don't shoot themselves.

Yeah, it's hard to see group responsibility when our culture goes on and on and on and on about 'individual responsibility.' All it really takes is one person to admit fault, and suddenly everyone stops pointing fingers at all the other people involved.
I love the "who's responsible" surveys. We could use more of them. I'm pretty sure I've made a few.

No one should be held responsible, accidents happen.

But a little boy died, and it didn't need to happen, but because it's an accident nobody's responsible?

Yes.

That's horrible.

Yeah. Life can be really horrible sometimes. I can name many things in life that are so awful we just can't wrap our thoughts around it. This is one of them.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — A police chief was among three men indicted on involuntary manslaughter charges in the death of an 8-year-old boy who accidentally shot himself in the head with an Uzi at a gun show.

The Westfield Sportsman's Club also faces the manslaughter charge in the death of Christopher Bizilj (bah-SEAL') of Ashford, Conn., who lost control of the 9mm micro submachine gun as it recoiled while he was firing at a pumpkin.

The boy's father was 10 feet behind him and reaching for his camera when the child fired the weapon.

Pelham Police Chief Edward Fleury owns the COP Firearms & Training, which sponsored the Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo Oct. 26 at the Westfield Sportsman's Club.

Two other men, Carl Guiffre of Hartford, Conn., and Domenico Spano, of New Milford, Conn., also were indicted on involuntary manslaughter charges. They brought the automatic weapon to the show, after assurances from Fleury that it was legal under Massachusetts law, District Attorney William Bennett said.

"A Micro Uzi is made by and for the Israeli Armed Forces and is intended to meet the operational needs of Israeli Special Forces," Bennett said, noting the weapon has a rate of fire of 1,700 round per minute. "It is not a hunting weapon."

Fleury and the club also were indicted on four counts each of furnishing a machine gun to a minor. Bennett said prosecutors know of at least four children, including Christopher, who fired the automatic weapons. The club faces a fine of up to $10,000 for each violation.

Fleury, Guiffre and Spano did not immediately return calls for comment. A man who answered the phone at the club said he was a member; he refused to identify himself and said no one wanted to talk.

The machine gun shoot drew hundreds of people to the sporting club's 375-acre compound. An advertisement said it would include machine gun demonstrations and rentals and free handgun lessons.

"It's all legal & fun — No permits or licenses required!!!!" reads the ad, posted on the club's Web site.

"You will be accompanied to the firing line with a Certified Instructor to guide you. But You Are In Control — "FULL AUTO ROCK & ROLL," the ad said.

The "Instructor" who was with Bizilj was a 15 year old who was not "Certified" or "Licensed."

The ad also said children under 16 would be admitted free, and both adults and children were offered free .22-caliber pistol and rifle shooting.

Christopher's father, Charles Bizilj, has said his son had experience firing handguns and rifles but the gun show was his first time with an automatic weapon.

Thanks for the follow-up. It was well (clearly) written.

So apparently neither the 15 year old non-instructor nor the father faced charges. That makes sense. The dad has enough grief already, and they must have figured the 15 year old wasn't expected to have wise maturity either. I'm surprised though that the club and event holders weren't included, as they were obviously complicit in what was apparently framed as use of an illegal weapon.

1700 rounds per minute? I think we should have banned such things after WWI, or the Civil War, or whenever conventions came into being, and the ability to observe and do something about infractions between political bodies.

I'm thinking citizens of the world should unite to boycott Israel and the palestinians any month either of them make moves to kill each other, including starvation by blocade. Alas, things are never so simple. Israelis could feign being Palestinians shooting into Israel, just to continue the blocading of palestinians. What I think they really need is forced integration on every street block. Don't let landlords rent unless percentages for the block are being met by doing so. It's hard to be at war when every third home is the opposite side, and 20 years later the kids who grew up together wont care anymore. I think the two state solution is just as useless as what already exists. Of course integration would eventually bring about class wars, but at least no one gets bombed in those.

The club is included in the charges.

It's the parents' fault.