WESTFIELD, Mass. — The Westfield Sportsman’s Club has been indicted for running a gun fair with a machine-gun shoot for children in which an eight-year-old boy was accidentally killed.
The Hampden County, Massachusetts district attorney announced that a grand jury indicted the Westfield Sportsman’s Club and three individuals with multiple counts of furnishing a machine gun to a person under 18 years old and involuntary manslaughter.
The indictments stem from the tragic shooting of Christopher Bizilj, 8, of Ashford, Connecticut, at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club’s annual “Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo” on October 26, 2008. The club advertised that the “full auto rock & roll” was “legal and fun,” and that there was “no age limit or licenses required to shoot machine guns.”
The club was indicted under Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 140, subsection 130 which provides that “whoever sells or furnishes any alien or any person under eighteen years of age a…machine gun or ammunition…shall be punished by a fine of not less than $1,000 nor more than $10,000, or by imprisonment in a state prison for not more than ten years or by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than two and one-half years, or by both such fine and imprisonment.”
