By Karen MacNutt,
Contributing Editor

In October of 2008, Christopher Bizilj suffered a tragic, accidental death at the Westfield Sportsmen's Club in Massachusetts. The club was hosting a "Machine Gun Shoot." For a price, anyone could go to the range and fire various machine guns while being supervised by a "certified instructor." The advertisement stated that the public did not need a license to attend or test fire the guns.

Eight-year-old Christopher was attending with his father. Christopher had fired other types of guns before, but never a machine gun. With his father's consent, Christopher picked out a Micro-Uzi to shoot because, like Christopher, the gun was small. What happened next is not clear. The gun discharged. The muzzle was not under control. A shot hit Christopher in the head causing a fatal wound.

Predictably, there was a cry for new laws before people knew what had caused the accident. "No one," some legislators shouted, "under 21 should be allowed to handle a machine gun." The fact that we have 18-year-old combat veterans returning from the Middle East seems to have escaped their attention. A young person may join the armed forces at the age of 17 if he or she has parental consent. Many of those we look to for the nation's defense are under 21.

The show's organizer, a local police chief, was indicted for manslaughter. The club faces fines for providing machine guns to minors. The District Attorney told the press that a Micro-Uzi can fire "1,700 rounds per minute." It was a lynch mob mentality. The fact that a Micro-Uzi magazine can not hold 1,700 rounds, or that 1,700 rounds would weigh over 40 pounds, was ignored. The fact a gun can cycle that fast, does not mean it can shoot that fast. The heat build up from a continuous burst would cause the gun to jam. Whether the gun fired five rounds or five thousand rounds had nothing to do with why the accident took place.

Fatal accidents on firing ranges are extremely rare. Over the last thirty years, the number of guns in private hands in the United States, and the percentage of Americans owning guns, has grown. The number of fatal accidents with guns has dropped.

According to The World Almanac:
In 1970, there were 2,406 fatal firearms accidents in the United States. In 2006, the latest year for which figures are available, there were 680 fatal accidents.

In comparison, there were 54,633 fatal car accidents in 1970 and 44,700 in 2006. There were 16,926 fatal falls in 1970 and in 2006, there were 21,200. There were 5,299 deaths from accidental poisonings in 1970 and in 2006 (after the child proof caps were made mandatory), there were 25,300. In 1970, 2,753 people died by choking on food while in 2006 the number was 4,100.

If we look at accidental deaths per-hundred thousand to adjust for population growth, accidental firearm's deaths dropped from 1.2 per hundred thousand in 1970 to .2 per hundred thousand in 2006. Suffocation from food stands at about 1.4 per hundred thousand.

If you like really scary figures, the National Academy of Science estimates that 98,000 people die each year in hospitals as a result of "medical errors." You are safer shooting machine guns on a firing range than going to a hospital.

One reason the accidental death rate with firearms has dropped is that the shooting sports community takes safety very seriously. Not only are shooters aggressive about the safe handling of firearms, but they are aggressive about teaching safety to others. Throughout the United States, thousands of private citizens volunteer their time to teach gun safety to gunowners, homeowners, and yes, even to children. Many programs are directed at people who have little knowledge of guns. Introductory programs are important to such people because they have limited opportunities to learn gun safety. To attract such people, programs often advertise that you do not need a gun license to participate.

Even in those states that require a license to possess guns, the temporary handling of a gun by an unlicensed person in the presence of a licensed person is generally not considered unlawful. Without such a rule, it would be difficult to train anyone in safe gun handling or conduct junior or home safety programs.

An important part of most gun training programs is to have students handle and fire guns. It is hard to learn how to swim if you are not allowed in the water. You can not teach a person to be safe with guns without letting them handle one. To fully understand what a gun is capable of, a student should be allowed to fire it.

Of particular concern in the Christopher Bizilj case is the District Attorney's claim that if a licensed person allows an unlicensed person to handle a firearm, even if it is under his or her supervision, the licensed person has unlawfully provided the unlicensed party with a gun. That is the essence of the criminal charges brought. That will discourage training. It is counter productive of public safety and a departure from how the law has been interpreted in the past.

But an eight-year-old, some will say, was too young to have a machine gun! A child is never too young to be introduced to safety. Children should be taught to be safe around stoves, with fire, with cars, with water sports, with household chemicals and with guns. Training saves lives.

The fact training programs save lives means little to those who do not like guns. They view such programs as a way for the "gun lobby" to introduce new people to the sport. The anti-gun lobby wants to attack training programs by intimidating the volunteer instructors. Preventing young people from handling guns under proper supervision will, in the long run, cost lives.

But a machine gun, some would say, is not a toy for an eight-year-old to play with. I agree. It is not a toy. No gun is a toy. Whether or not a child is too young to handle a gun depends upon the child, the gun and the way the gun is presented.

It would be perfectly safe for an infant to pull the lanyard of a howitzer. The gun has been aimed by responsible adults and is in a fixed position that the child can not change.

Likewise, firing a .50 cal. (Ma Duce) machine gun is safe for just about anyone if the gun has been properly set up. The gun is fixed in place so that it has a very limited range of fire.
Without accusing anyone at the Westborough Club of improper conduct, and without implying that there is only "one" proper way to do things, let me set out some of the things I consider when I let someone shoot one of my guns for the first time.

First and foremost, the instructor must, at all times, control the gun. The gun should be "safe" until the student is on the firing line, in a proper position to shoot, the gun is pointing down range and the range is "hot."

If there is any question about recoil or the ability of a person to handle the gun, I start the person off with some kind of supported bench rest position. I have the person close their eyes and slowly dry fire the gun. That way they have a feeling for when the trigger will release the sear. It makes the person more aware of when the gun will discharge. All instruction on the handling and control of a gun needs to take place before any ammunition is placed in the gun.

I also explain and demonstrate how the gun will recoil. I may even fire a few rounds to let the new shooter see and hear what is going to happen. If I have a semi-auto, I will load one round in the magazine so that the person can get the feel for the recoil without having to worry about a second shot. It is natural to squeeze the gun harder when it discharges in an attempt to control the recoil. For an untrained shooter, that can cause the person to unknowingly squeeze the trigger.

Particular care must be taken to introduce a small-framed shooter to the gun. Youth is not the only factor. Some adult women can be smaller and lighter than some adolescent boys. Some senior citizens may not have the hand strength they once had.

With very young children, I bring a chair up to the firing line. I will seat the child in my lap and then simulate a prone position with the child's upper body leaning across the bench. My left hand will hold the forearm of the rifle. The child is then allowed to "aim" the gun using my arm as a pivot, and to pull the trigger. In this way I have allowed children as young as four to shoot.

It is important that the gun fits the shooter. New shooters commonly make the mistake of looking for a "little" gun or one that is light. They think that a smaller, lighter gun is easer to shoot than a large gun. A small gun of a large caliber is much more difficult to shoot than a large gun of a small caliber. The heavier the gun, the steadier it is. The larger mass will better absorb recoil. A longer barrel is more accurate. It also has less noise and less recoil than an identical gun with a short barrel.

Rather than finding Christopher a "little" gun, the range officer should have insisted he fire the largest, heaviest gun Christopher could lift. The recoil would heave been less and, if the gun kicked back, the longer barrel would have hit Christopher in the face giving him a black eye or a broken nose. It would not have kicked back and come up under his chin in a position where he could shoot himself.

Range safety is everyone's business but it is the direct responsibility of the range officers and instructors. The instructor's first obligation is to teach his or her student to be safe. The instructor must not allow a student to handle a gun until he knows how to do so safely. An instructor should not allow a student to insert a magazine in the gun until all is ready to shoot. The instructor needs the maturity and experience to require the shooter to have the proper equipment. Not only does each shooter need eye and hearing protection, he or she must also have equipment that fits properly. Just as a driving instructor makes his or her student adjust the seat before turning the car on, the firearms instructor must make sure that everything fits before a round is loaded. The instructor should not allow a student to shoot live ammunition unless the student and equipment are properly matched.

Back when most police departments used .357 revolvers, the police often used oversized grips on their guns. The grips looked awesome but did not fit everyone. I have a small hand. With an oversized grip on a gun, my finger can not reach the trigger if I hold the gun properly. There are three solutions to this. 1. Hold the gun with a "broken" wrist so that the finger can reach the trigger. 2. Replace the grip with a smaller one. 3. Use a gun with a smaller frame. Answers 2 & 3 are proper solutions. Answer 1 is not a correct answer. Holding the gun improperly leads to loss of control of the gun and can cause tendon damage to your elbow and shoulder.

If the instructor is not doing his job of insuring his students are properly instructed, then it is the job of the range office to enforce safety. That sometimes means closing the range or telling someone they cannot shoot without meeting certain conditions.

Sometimes, no matter how safe we are, no matter what we do, accidents happen. As much as we feel bad for the person hurt, as much as we wish the accident had not happened, life goes on.

We still drive our cars. We still have prescription medications in our homes. We still get on commercial airliners. People still have swimming pools in their backyards. We still go to a doctor when we are sick. Our prayers go out to Christopher's family. We should ask if there was something that could have been done to be safer. Hopefully our attention will be a little more focused when we instruct a new shooter. We cannot, however, afford to give up reaching out to people so that we can instruct them to be safe with guns. Safety comes with knowledge, not with ignorance. To stop the introductory programs, to deny them to children, would be irresponsible. In the long run, it would cost lives.