What’s the Life of a Child Worth?

A Massachusetts gun club will donate $10,000 to charity as part of plea deal for their part in the death of an 8-year-old boy who shot himself with an Uzi at a gun show they had sponsored.

Three men, including the police chief of a nearby town, who arranged the show and brought the weapons to the show will go on trial in June. The club had faced four counts of providing a machine gun to a minor. In 2008, Christopher Bizilj, a third-grader from Ashford, Connecticut, was brought to the gun fair sponsored by the Westfield, Mass., Sportsmen’s Club by his father, Dr. Charles Bizilj. The father was a few feet away, reaching for his camera, when the boy lost control of the 9 mm micro machine gun as he was attempting to fire at a pumpkin. The gun recoiled, and he shot himself in the head. “We trusted this event would be fun and safe,” wrote Suzanne Bizilj, the boy’s mother, in a written statement read by the family attorney. “My family has been ripped apart, and relationships have been badly damaged.” The money will be donated to the Shriners Hospital and to the Children’s Miracle Network.