A sportsman’s club has pleaded no contest in the tragic death of an 8-year-old boy from Connecticut who shot himself by mistake in 2008 when he could not handle the recoil of an Uzi machine gun in Massachusetts.
Prompted by the death of the boy, the state House of Representatives voted unanimously last year to keep machine guns out of the hands of anyone under the age of 16. The House action came after the state Senate had recently voted 31 to 2 in favor of the bill with two Republicans voting against it.
The new law, which prohibits the transfer of such weapons to children, was in response to the death of Christopher K. Bizilj, an Ashford boy who lost control of a Micro Uzi submachine gun in late October 2008 in Massachusetts and accidentally shot himself in the head.
The third-grader, who was 4 feet 3 and weighed 66 pounds, couldn’t control the high-powered weapon’s recoil. A Massachusetts grand jury later indicted a police chief, the gun club and two Connecticut men in connection with the accident at the machine gun event in Westfield.
Both Republicans and Democrats have described the measure as “common sense” legislation, saying they believe that most citizens would be surprised to learn that it had been legal for minors to fire such a powerful weapon.
Rep. Michael P. Lawlor of East Haven, the co-chairman of the legislature’s judiciary committee, and Rep. Arthur O’Neill of Southbury, the committee’s ranking member, both described the measure at the time as a compromise among those concerned about gun control.
“Handing a machine gun to an 8-year-old is a pretty irresponsible thing to do,” O’Neill told his colleagues last year on the House floor. “There is widespread agreement that this is a reasonable piece of legislation. … These are very dangerous weapons.”
Children who are 14 or 15 years old are not permitted to drive a car, and they should not be permitted to handle machine guns, O’Neill said.
In the accident, the boy was firing at a pumpkin with a 9mm Micro Uzi that can fire at a rate of 1,700 rounds a minute. The boy lost control of the weapon, which he was firing at the Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo, a two-day event for gun enthusiasts at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club.
While gun-control debates normally last many hours in Hartford, the debate was one of the shortest in state history on guns. The debate started at about 10:25 p.m. and ended about 20 minutes later.
Further details are at http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-ap-ashford-boy-shoots-self-uzi-0311,0,836058.story