Three charged in boy’s Micro Uzi death
December 27th, 2008
Failed to post this when it came out, but here it is: Pelham chief, Westfield Sportsman’s Club plead innocent in boy’s machine gun death
Innocent pleas to the charge of involuntary manslaughter were entered in Hampden Superior Court on Monday on behalf of Pelham Police Chief Edward B. Fleury and the Westfield Sportsman’s Club, accused in the accidental death of an 8-year-old Connecticut boy.
The charges followed the Oct. 26 death of Christopher K. Bizilj, of Ashford, Conn. The boy died from a head wound when he lost control of a Micro Uzi submachine gun he was firing at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club gun show.
The police chief owns COP Firearms & Training, the place of the accident.
The father will, apparently, not be charged. I can understand that he’s suffered a lot and will suffer more, but it’s difficult to see how someone else can be legally at fault while he isn’t.
The state law which prohibits furnishing automatic weapons to persons under the age of 18 was broken. State Rep. Michael A. Costello (D-Newburyport) says he will support a bill raising the the age requirement to 21.
And that would have helped how, exactly?
And, inevitably, in the comments section of the news item:
I don’t think this is what our forefathers had in mind when they wrote the second amendment to the Constitution.
No, it’s not. Most people would be shocked if we made provisions for what the Second Amendment is really about.
Tags: MA
December 27th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Note to Second Amendment pundits and the U.S. Supreme Court:
When Alexander Hamilton and John Jay told Congress that “the people have a right to keep and bear arms,” there’s no way they could have been referring to a right of individuals to carry arms for their own private purposes. Below I explain why that is, but first read this:
“That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, including the body of the people capable of bearing arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state.”
This was a declaration agreed to by Hamilton, Jay, and others as part of a proposed bill of rights transmitted to Congress, along with New York’s ratification of the Constitution, by that state’s ratification convention in 1788.
Now think about these facts:
If “bear arms” in the declaration had meant “carry arms,” then “bearing arms” in the same declaration obviously would have meant “carrying arms.” That would have been to say that the people in general had a right to carry arms but that only those actually capable of carrying arms should serve in the militia.
Such a meaning would be absurd, particularly in view of the fact that almost everyone not in diapers is capable of carrying arms of some kind.
Alexander Hamilton and John Jay surely were saying in this Second Amendment precursor that the people as a political community had a right to keep arms and provide militia service, with the actual militia duties being performed by those judged capable of doing so.
The right expressed in the Second Amendment is the same as that proposed by New York.
December 27th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Leif: You seem to have put a lot of thought into it. That’s great.
However, you are lecturing “Second Amendment pundits and the U.S. Supreme Court” on the US Constitution’s Second Amendment using something other than the Second Amendment. If your position that the Second Amendment is “the same” as the New York proposal, it would then be the same.
In fact, if you compare them, they are not the same.
FWIW, Alexander Hamilton’s original position was that an amendment regarding firearms was not needed at all. He says he thought this because he believed it was self-evident that men were free to own firearms and that the government had no power to interfere with it.
December 28th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Why’d you let that kid use the micro Uzi?
I mean thats dumb, an 8 year old shooting an Uzi if that was my kid I’d sue the person responsible for the gun club
December 28th, 2008 at 3:53 am
Poppycock. In Heller vs DC, Supreme Court Justice Scalia takes us through a fascinating and scholarly trip through the meaning of 2A and the language of 2A as it was understood at the time. Rakur’s position on this issue crumbles even faster than Justice Steven’s with even a cursory reading of the majority opinion. The Harvard Law Review even agrees here.
The time for twisting and spinning this fundamental right is finally ended. It is, and always has been, an individual right which pre-dates the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself.
Read the decision, read the decision, read the decision.
December 29th, 2008 at 8:16 am
So, this new law would prohibit a 19-year-old in the MA National Guard from training with a SAW? Are they going to conduct age checks at the Ft. Devens range?