WESTFIELD, Mass. — With an instructor watching, an 8-year-old boy at a gun fair aimed an Uzi at a pumpkin and pulled the trigger as his dad reached for a camera.
It was his first time shooting a fully automatic machine gun, and the recoil of the weapon was too much for him. He lost control and fatally shot himself in the head.
Now gun safety experts — and some gun enthusiasts at the club where the shooting happened — are wondering why such a young child was allowed to fire a weapon used in war. Local, state and federal authorities are also investigating whether everyone involved had proper licenses or if anyone committed a criminal act.
Police said Christopher Bizilj (Bah-SEAL) of Ashford, Conn., was pronounced dead at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., on Sunday afternoon, shortly after firing a 9 mm micro Uzi submachine gun at the Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club.
Christopher, a third-grader, was attending the show with his father and sixth-grade brother, Colin. Christopher had fired handguns and rifles before, but Sunday was his first time firing an automatic weapon, said his father, Charles Bizilj.
Bizilj told the Boston Globe he was about 10 feet behind his son and reaching for his camera when the weapon fired. He said his family avoided the larger weapons, but he let his son try the Uzi because it’s a small weapon with little recoil.
“This accident was truly a mystery to me,” said Bizilj.
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