Reply #12: I think I'm okay with this outcome for Fleury specifically

[Euromutt]

It's a bit hard to say because it's less than clear to me who played precisely which role in this whole clusterfuck. As far as I can ascertain, Fleury was the organizer of the whole event, and as such bears some responsibility, but responsibility and culpability aren't quite the same thing. As the organizer, Fleury hired Guiffre and Spano Sr. to provide some of the guns at the shoot, but he may have assumed in good faith that Guiffre and Spano Sr. could run their part of the show competently, and not realized that Spano was using his 15 year-old son as an "instructor."

I do think it's more than a little disingenuous of Fleury's lawyer to argue:

that Christopher's father bore some responsibility for the boy's death for allowing, even insisting, that Christopher be allowed to shoot the powerful automatic weapon.

I'm not wholly convinced that Bizilj Sr. insisted that Christopher be allowed to shoot that particular automatic weapon, but I can well imagine he insisted that Christopher should get to shoot an automatic weapon. Otherwise, what's the point of going to a machine gun shoot?

Christopher's 11-year-old brother Colin had shot before Christopher. Colin first fired a full-size Uzi, but the gun's automatic mode malfunctioned and was only shooting one round at a time. Charles Bizilj, who stood to the side videotaping, requested that his son shoot an automatic weapon so <Michael> Spano offered up the Micro Uzi, according to Spano's testimony.

"I told him it wasn't a good idea because it shoots fast and kicks hard," said Spano, who said he twice warned the father. Spano was in charge of running people through the line that day and was not a trained instructor.

Look, I don't want to be overly harsh to Spano Jr., given that he was 15 at the time, but you can't reasonably try to pin the blame on Bizilj Sr. when you're the one first who "offered up" the Micro-Uzi and ultimately did not refuse to let the kid fire it.

Honestly, I don't really know that anyone should be subject to a criminal conviction for involuntary manslaughter in this case, much as certain people may be a baying for blood. Jeez, how many 8 year-olds have been killed since then in motor vehicle accidents? It is going be the civil trials that prove interesting, and from where I'm standing, it looks like Domenico Spano is the person w2ho bears the most responsibility.