Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives (21 page)

Nonetheless, so long as you have a society with a lot of guns—and America has more guns per capita than any other country in the world
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—children will be at risk of being shot. The questions are how much risk, and what, if anything, is being done to minimize it? If one thinks of the various ways in which commonplace items, from car seats to medicine bottle tops, have been childproofed, it’s clear that society’s general desire has been to eliminate as many potential dangers from children as possible, even when the number of those who might be harmed is relatively small. If one child’s death is preventable, then the proper question isn’t “Why should we do this?” but rather “Why shouldn’t we?” It would be strange for that principle to apply to everything but guns.

But the kind of research that might show what works where gun safety is concerned is in short supply. That is no accident. At one time, guns, the primary source of death of black youth and second-leading source for all
youth, were considered a public health concern. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention produced findings and reports on how to limit gun deaths in the same way that they produce reports on healthy eating and how to prevent sudden infant death syndrome. They found, among other things, that the presence of guns in the home increased the likelihood of death rather than reduced it.
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The National Rifle Association was not pleased with this particular conclusion or the research in general. “Our concern is not with legitimate medical science,” Chris Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, told the
New York Times.
“Our concern is they were promoting the idea that gun ownership was a disease that needed to be eradicated.”
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So the NRA used their immense lobbying power to effectively put a stop to the government’s finding out how to make people safer around guns. In 1996, Kansas Republican Congressman Jay Dickey, who later described himself as the NRA’s “point person in Congress,” successfully removed $2.6 million—the precise amount spent on gun research the previous year—from the CDC’s budget.
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The law now reads, “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
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Because legislation already in place prohibited the CDC from lobbying for or against legislation, the ruling was redundant. But it had the effect of keeping both resources and researchers away from that area of study for fear that their findings would prove politically inconvenient and attract the wrath of pro-gun legislators. “We’ve been stopped from answering the basic questions,” Mark Rosenberg, former director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, told the
New York Times
in 2011.
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In January 2013, in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, President Barack Obama started a second term that became increasingly strident in its advocacy for gun control. One of his executive actions sought to shift the climate of caution by issuing “a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.”

The problem has, however, been ongoing. On November 14, 2013, nine days before Tyler was shot, President Barack Obama nominated Vivek Murthy for surgeon general. But the process most assumed would be routine—Murthy was well-qualified and bore not a whiff of personal scandal—became mired in controversy. Republican legislators focused on his support for an assault weapons ban and on a tweet he’d sent out in 2012, a few months after the shootings by James Holmes in an Aurora, Colorado, cinema that killed twelve and injured seventy others. “Tired of politicians playing politics w/ guns, putting lives at risk b/c they’re scared of NRA. Guns are a health care issue. #DebateHealth,” he tweeted.
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It took more than a year for him to be confirmed by the narrowest of margins, after the NRA rallied its members against a nominee whose “blatant activism on gun control” caught their notice.
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Research that does exist shows that children face substantial risk in the presence of guns. In more than half of American homes where there are both children and firearms, according to a 2000 study, the weapons are in an unlocked place, and in more than 40 percent of homes, guns without a trigger lock are in an unlocked place.
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Almost three-quarters of children under the age of ten who live in homes with guns say they know where the guns are.
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A 2005 study showed that more than 1.69 million children and youth under eighteen live in homes with weapons that are loaded and unlocked.
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According to a Department of Education study, 65 percent of school shootings between 1974 and 2000 were carried out with a gun from the attacker’s home or the home of a relative.
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And the laws, it seems, are effective. One study indicated that in the twelve states where child-access prevention laws were on the books for at least one year, unintentional gun deaths fell by 23 percent.
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Another, from 2005, revealed a link between the presence of such laws and the prevention of youth suicides.
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Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have child-access prevention laws, which range in severity from imposing criminal liability when a minor gains access to a negligently stored weapon to forbidding adults from providing children with firearms.
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Michigan, where Tyler died, is not one of them. But that’s not for want of trying. A bill to create
a safe-storage law, which would criminalize those who fail to lock up their firearms so that children can’t get at them, was introduced in every session of the Michigan state legislature for fifteen years. It only made it out of the committee stage once.

The NRA vigorously opposes such laws, in Michigan and elsewhere, for two reasons. First, they argue that the number of children who die in accidental gun deaths is minuscule and decreasing. Second, because forcing gun owners to keep guns under lock and key makes it virtually impossible for them to effectively defend themselves in the home. (I imagine the “Home Defense Concepts” seminar at the NRA convention would have sounded very different if you had to find the key to your gun safe first.) But research shows that people are most likely to be shot not by strangers but by people they know or by themselves. A study in 1998 showed that for every gun in the house that was used for self-defense in a “legally justifiable shooting,” there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and eleven attempted or completed suicides.
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According to Sheriff Biniecki, most of the gun fatalities in Sanilac County are “domestic-related”—a former husband shooting an ex-wife, or “a convicted sex offender who took out his stepdad and uncle. . . . It’s about every three years it seems to rear its ugly head.”

Laws, of course, do not guarantee good outcomes. They only punish bad ones and set the standard for what the socially acceptable behavior should be. “There were a lot of things went into play that set this up for failure,” says Biniecki, referring to Tyler’s death. “The boys were deer hunting before. They’re around [firearms]. Now, one step didn’t take place. Could the father have locked ’em up and the boys have broken into it? Sure. But in this particular incident that’s not what happened. We know the gun was out. We know the boys had access to it, and we know the tragic results. I think a lot of it is our personal responsibility.” And with personal responsibility, he insisted shortly after the shooting, come personal consequences. “We’re going to seek charges,” he told the local paper. “Someone has to answer for it. The kids should not have been home alone.”
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On February 20, 2014, Jerry and Brandon appeared in District Court. Jerry was a three-time felon. According to a circuit court clerk, over the past couple of decades he had been convicted, at different times, of dealing drugs, “manufacturing marijuana and a schedule-four drug,” resisting and obstructing a police officer, “operating a vehicle while impaired,” and “operating a vehicle with an open container.”

Felons in the United States are not allowed to have guns. So Jerry was charged with weapons-firearms possession by a felon, which is itself a felony carrying a maximum of five years in prison. For leaving two boys alone with loaded guns that ended in the death of one of them, he was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a ninety-day misdemeanor. He was released on $2,500 bail.
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Brandon was arraigned in juvenile court and charged with careless discharge of a firearm, causing death, which carries a maximum two-year sentence. On April 10, Brandon pleaded guilty; on May 5, Jerry pleaded no contest, telling the prosecutor he felt bad about the shooting and had told Brandon to plead guilty because “he had made a mistake.”

At a hearing on May 1, Lora told me, Connie wept as Brandon stood in gray sweat pants and a hoodie and the judge placed him in “intense probation” at her home. The next day he was sentenced. There were twenty-nine terms to his probation. He was sent to a junior detention facility for ten days, with a further twenty days “held in abeyance,” to be enforced if he failed to comply with the other twenty-eight restrictions on his liberty. The probation would be reviewed by the court every thirty days, said Sanilac County Prosecutor James Young, who anticipated it would last until Brandon was eighteen or nineteen, or “until such time that he no longer needs services and demonstrates he needs no more probation.”
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According to court documents, the terms for probation included electronic tagging, a seven p.m. to seven a.m. curfew, participation in anger-management classes, counseling, thirty hours of community service, random drug and alcohol testing, paying for Tyler’s cremation services, and a minimum of ten journaling assignments provided by his probation officer.

Point four says he must stay with Connie in Michigan, point seven that he should not leave the state without the prior consent of his probation officer, and point nineteen that he have no contact, direct or indirect, with Tyler’s family. Among them, those three points proved difficult to adhere to. These rural communities are small; the social networks are tight. Though Brandon hasn’t sought contact with Tyler’s family members, they are difficult to avoid. Connie moved less than half an hour’s drive away. Tiffany was on a shift at McDonald’s in Marlette one day when they came through; other family members occasionally see him around.

Six weeks after Brandon was sentenced, it was Jerry’s turn. Citing his previous convictions, the judge sentenced him to a year in Sanilac County Jail for the first count of weapons-firearms possession by a felon and ninety days to run concurrently for the second count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He also had to cover certain costs, including for the court-appointed attorney.
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The law had spoken. But it declared its values without any moral consistency. Jerry got a year because he’d once committed “serious crimes” that precluded him from having a gun. He got three months for leaving several guns, at least one of which was loaded, unattended in the house and then leaving his son and a friend unsupervised with them. That crime, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, would have been the same if Tyler and Brandon had found his porn stash. Not only did the punishments not fit the crimes; the crime in no way fit the transgression. His negligence had arguably left Brandon corrupted, but it had certainly left Tyler dead.

Tyler’s family believes that both Brandon and Jerry got off too lightly. Particularly Brandon, who they are convinced shot Tyler on purpose. They think there has been a cover-up. Something fishy. They can’t say precisely what. But to them the story doesn’t hang together. Lora doesn’t buy the idea that Tyler was trying to put the gun down and the latch got caught on his shorts pocket. “To me I think he was lying. I don’t believe that even happened. I already knew from the get-go that I didn’t think it was an accident. I believe his finger was on the trigger.”

Over pizza with Brittany, her mother, her stepfather, and her grandmother, I asked what would constitute justice for Tyler. Brittany paused. “I would want eye for eye,” she said. I paused. “You mean you want Brandon executed?” I asked. She nodded. “Brandon needs to be gone. I don’t think he should be able to live his life. That’s just my personal opinion.” I paused again and looked around the table. “Does everyone agree?” They all nodded. “And Jerry?” “He should have time for what he did,” said Lora. “He should probably sit inside for the rest of his life,” added Brittany. “He had a role in it, but he technically didn’t pull the trigger.” (In her capacity as the personal representative of Tyler’s estate, Lora has since filed suit against both Brandon and Jerry, seeking more than $25,000, according to the
Sanilac County News
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I asked Lora if Jerry or Connie had ever reached out to them since Tyler was killed. She said they’d had no contact since Jerry’s girlfriend had come over, a few days after the shooting, to return Tyler’s effects. Would they have liked to hear from them? “It would have been nice for them to say something. Put a card in my mailbox or something. But no. Never heard a word from them.”

“Even at the court they could have turned around and said something,” said Janet. “Yeah, when he stood up in front of the judge and said it wasn’t his fault,” recalls Lora. “Well,” says Janet. “It wasn’t his fault because he wasn’t home.”