May 29, 2024 • 44 mins
On May 29, 1994, the Dix family's life was irrevocably altered when Kenzo, a beloved and vibrant fifteen-year-old, was tragically shot and killed by a friend playing with an unsecured firearm. In this episode, hosts Kelly and JJ delve into this heart-wrenching story with Griffin Dix, Kenzo's father, through excerpts from his poignant book, "Who Killed Kenzo: The Loss of a Son and the Ongoing Battle for Gun Safety." Griffin paints a vivid picture of the emotional turmoil and profound impact Kenzo's death had on both his family and the shooter's family.
Griffin's narrative transcends the pain of loss, highlighting his relentless journey towards advocacy and justice. We explore the family's legal battle against Beretta USA, scrutinizing the firearm's features, and the broader systemic failures that enabled such a tragedy. Griffin also shares how he found solace and strength through the support of activists and the community, and the enduring legacy of Kenzo.
Further reading:
Long Battle Against Guns Began With a Son's Death (the New York Times)
After son's fatal accident, father fights to make weapons safer (the Times Herald)
Dix v. Beretta (Brady)
COVID-19, gun sales and guns in homes (the Hill)
The gun industry's six deadly lies (the Seattle Times)
For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.
Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
In a crisis? Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a Crisis Counselor 24/7.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Legal Disclaimer, where I tell you
that the views, thoughts andopinions shared on this podcast
belong solely to our guests andhosts, and not necessarily Brady
or Brady's affiliates.
Please note this podcastcontains discussions of violence
that some people may finddisturbing.
It's okay, we find itdisturbing too.
Hey everybody, welcome back toanother episode of Red Bull and
(00:45):
Brady.
I'm one of your hosts, jj.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And I'm Kelly, your other host.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And today we are sitting down with another
extended episode for you.
This is a version of a liveevent we held with the great
Griffin Dick.
But if you want to see thewhole thing uncut, you can just
go over to Brady's YouTubechannel link's in the
description of this episode.
See the whole thing.
But if not, can just go over toBrady's YouTube channel link's
in the description of thisepisode.
See the whole thing.
But if not, I guess for youtoday, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I definitely think the whole thing is worth
watching because Griffin is justan incredible advocate.
It really shows just how heroica father is in his love for his
child.
But if you're with us for thepodcast today, we're going to
learn a lot more about what itmeans to try to hold the gun
industry accountable after aloved one in this case,
(01:33):
griffin's son is killed due togun violence.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Well.
Thank you, jj and Kelly, forinviting me to your wonderful
Red, blue and Brady podcast.
The book is who Killed Kenzo,the Loss of a Son and the
Ongoing Battle for Gun Safety.
The book begins in May of 1994when my wife Lynn and I got a
(02:07):
call from Oakland Children'sHospital.
They said to go thereimmediately but wouldn't tell us
more.
So we rushed there wonderingwhat had happened, and I'll
start reading from there.
What had happened and I'llstart reading from there.
(02:29):
At the hospital they pointed usto a cold white waiting room
and told us to sit down.
We fidgeted and worried.
Occasionally we tried to saysomething, but there was nothing
to say.
Finally a doctor came in.
Are you the Dix's?
Finally a doctor came in.
Are you the Dix's?
He took a deep breath and satdown.
(02:50):
I'm Dr Stephen Yedlin.
He began your son was with hisfriend when the boy got a gun in
his house and accidentally shotyour son.
Apparently he didn't realizethe gun was still loaded.
The bullet went through theshoulder and into his heart.
(03:10):
They called 911.
When your son got here he dideverything we could but we
couldn't save him.
I didn't believe him.
Wasn't there something thisdoctor should be doing right now
Ben asked can we see Kenzo?
(03:31):
No, he's been taken out of theemergency room.
You can't see him.
I'm sorry, it's hospital policy.
Kenzo was gone.
Kenzo had died.
We couldn't see him.
Now I skip to a later part ofthe chapter.
(03:53):
When Kenzo's friend Mark apseudonym was taken to the
police station that evening hewas asked to explain in writing
what had happened.
He wrote his story on six pagesof lined paper in his kids
printing like a schoolassignment.
(04:15):
This is part of what he wrote.
When we got to my house we wentto my room and sat in there for
a couple of minutes andlistened to one of my tapes.
Kenzo loaded and shot theSheridan BB gun at some birds.
I loaded it and shot it.
Once I went downstairs alone tomy dad's and mom's room, I
unzipped the bag that carrieshis Beretta, released the clip,
(04:38):
unzipped a second compartment ofthe bag and took an empty clip
out, ran upstairs to my bedroom,put the clip in.
Kenzo turned around with theSheraton in his hand.
He said something.
I flicked the safety up and bam, he was shot in the arm, with
(04:59):
his face in my futon on hisknees.
I tried to pick him up to takehim to the living room.
I left him.
My mother ran to see whathappened.
I screamed help.
I shot Kenzo.
My mother said what, what?
Before we went to bed that night, lynn said we should go to
(05:22):
Mark's house the next day toconsole him and tell him.
We knew it was not intentional.
I didn't want to face it, but Iknew she was right.
That night I lay in bed,squirming, sweating and
sleepless.
My body wanted to defend itself.
My body wanted to defend itself.
(05:44):
It wanted to protect Kenzo.
In the morning we called to askif we could go over and then we
drove to Mark's house.
A short woman I had never metanswered the door and said she
was Mark's stepmother.
Her face was chalk white andpuffy, her swollen eyes, bleary
(06:06):
and tearful.
She brought us into the livingroom and asked us to sit.
We couldn't sit.
Mark's father came in, his eyesred.
I'd met him only once, briefly,when I dropped Kenzo off there.
He ran his palm over his crewcut and told us how sorry he was
(06:28):
.
Then Mark staggered into theliving room head down.
I barely recognized him as thegood-looking kid I knew.
His sallow face was streakedwith tears, his shirt drenched
in sweat stuck to his back.
(06:49):
Lynn blurted Mark and put herarms around him.
He embraced her and broke downHis shoulders.
He gasped between loud sobs.
Over and over he cried I'msorry, I love Kenzo, I'm sorry.
Then I hugged Mark too.
His muscular body dripped sweatand tears.
(07:12):
He wailed I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
He was trapped in the worstnightmare imaginable.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
And I thank you for writing it and then thank you
for reliving it and telling itand even in just your reading of
it.
Now, folks who have been in theunfortunate position that you
are in of being a survivor, whohave come on this podcast before
, have made it a point to let usknow that it doesn't get easier
(07:42):
.
It gets different maybe, but itdoesn't get easier telling this
.
So thank you for sharing whathappened to Kenzo with us.
Before we continue to maybemove into the aftermath and then
the actual then formation ofthis book, I wonder just really
briefly, if we can talk aboutwho Kenzo was as a kid a little
bit, if you could tell us alittle bit about Kenzo, if you
(08:04):
don't mind sharing a little moreabout him.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
He was a complete joy .
Um, he was fun and curious andeverybody around him liked him
so, and he would leave littlestickies around saying I have to
get up in the morning to go tobasketball practice, you know,
please, you know, give me a ridehere and there or something.
(08:29):
And he would write.
He liked writing poems andthings.
And he wrote a 10-year planthat we discovered after it was
in a school assignment, but wediscovered it on his desk after
he had died and that's writtenin the book.
So I, you know, I could go onand on.
(08:51):
We, we, we, just we really misshim because he was, in part,
just because of who he was andwhat a joy to us he was.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Thanks for sharing a little bit about who Kenzo was,
because one of the things thatwe always like to do is make
sure we don't just focus on howpeople die, but also who they
were.
So thank you for sharing yourson with us, and it's
interesting that you said heliked to write, because, of
course, you wrote a book andyou've been doing this work for
(09:23):
a long time and so wondering ifyou could share what prompted
you to decide that you weregoing to share this story in
such an intimate way at thisparticular time.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
You know, not so long after Kenzo died, I began to
learn about all the loopholes inour gun laws and I was very
curious about how this couldhappen.
And immediately I was convincedthis should never happen.
And I began to learn that thegun lobby makes it easy for
(10:01):
criminals and underage youth toget guns and they market guns,
playing on people's fears, andthey keep the Bureau of Alcohol,
tobacco and Firearmsunderfunded and unable to even
enforce the weak gun laws thatwe do have.
(10:22):
And I thought, gee, peopleshould know about all this.
And so that was a long time agoand I began thinking maybe I'll
write a book about this.
And then things kept happening.
I met more and more people,more victims of gun violence, or
you may call it survivors.
(10:43):
And then I went and helped bytestifying before the California
State Legislature Public SafetyCommittee in favor of a safe
storage bill and was shocked athow the gun industry's lobbyists
misrepresented the bill and howall the Republicans on the
(11:09):
Public Safety Committee votedagainst a very reasonable bill.
And I was just shocked at allthe things I kept learning.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
And then Brady lawyer John Lowy, brady lawyer, john
Lowy, agreed to bring ourlawsuit against Beretta USA
buckets, if you will.
It seems that it's about grief,it's about advocacy, it's about
guns and then it's about the UScourt system and how maybe all
of these things interact, andfailures, maybe especially on
the path of the last two buckets.
(11:54):
And so if we can focus on thoselast two, which is the, I would
say, the meat of the technicalside of the text, I wonder if
you can unpack for us the basisof the case that you and then
handgun control link and theneventually Brady brought against
Beretta, the gun manufacturer.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
When we learned about the Beretta that killed Kenzo,
we learned that it lacked aprominent chamber loaded
indicator and that the manualthat came with the gun was very
inadequate in explaining therisks of storing a gun unsafely
and in explaining even thefeatures that were on the gun.
(12:40):
We argued in the lawsuit that agun is defective without
adequate safety features such asa chamber-loaded indicator, a
built-in lock, and that led usto.
You know, the Berettasemi-automatic handgun had been
designed for the military andpolice and it wasn't really
(13:03):
designed to be originally to besold to civilians.
But the gun industry andBeretta USA had followed a
common tactic of advertising oh,this gun has been chosen by
police and law enforcement.
Therefore it's a gun you shoulduse in your home for protection
(13:25):
.
But they had never tested it tosee if ordinary homeowners
could use it properly.
It had passed a test a mud test, you know you put it in the mud
for a long time and then youtake it out and does it fire and
other extreme weather tests andso forth but they never tested
(13:50):
whether ordinary homeownerscould use it.
In fact, this gun had a tinylittle chamber loaded indicator.
They called it on the side ofthe gun for police to feel at
night, when there is a bullet inthe chamber they put their
finger on and there's a littlebump that sticks out just one
(14:11):
millimeter.
And our gun expert said I can'tfeel the difference of this.
So it really lacked when I sayit lacked a prominent chamber
loaded indicator and that wasone of the major defects of the
gun.
So, and many people think whenthey've removed the magazine
(14:37):
that has ammunition in it thatthey've unloaded the gun.
So but this boy had been to theshooting range with his father
and if he had seen a prominentchamber loaded indicator
sticking right up every time thelast bullet was fired from the
magazine and the chamber wasempty, you know it would go down
(14:59):
and go up when there's a bulletwas in the chamber.
He, you know he, would haveseen that there was still a
bullet in the chamber after heremoved the magazine.
That's what.
And we thought a safer designwould have saved kenzo's life
and prevented the death thanksfor kind of breaking down what
(15:24):
exactly was going on with thefirearm.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
that was the basis of the case, and one of the things
that comes up in the book ispeople asking OK, yes, there is
this design defect, but why notgo after the boy or the parents
instead of the manufacturer?
And you talk about that in thebook and I'm wondering if you
could share that with listeners.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Yeah, well, that's a very reasonable question.
And in fact the first thing theBrady lawyers did was to sue
the father, because everybodyrecognized that both the father
and his son had made horriblemistakes.
So we thought the father andthe son and the design of the
(16:10):
gun made by and sold by BerettaUSA, all had helped cause
Kenzo's death.
Um, so um.
And when in the court theBeretta lawyers said all of the
(16:38):
blame should go only to thefather and to his son, and we
said we agreed that they were,they had helped cause Kenzo's
death.
But we said the design of thegun is, and the more you blame
(17:26):
the gun, the less guilty thefather and son is.
Well, to us that didn't make anysense because we thought they
were all guilty, uh, and theywere all had caused Kenzo's
death.
Uh, so that and and jurors inthe thinking that way.
That didn't make sense to usand that was a major problem in
(17:51):
the way the judge had ruled thatthat had to be applied.
It's sort of a pro-corporateproblem.
That's under California law andsome other states.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
And I have to say, even as someone who has worked
now on gun violence preventionfor several years, I had never
quite understood.
I'll be honest, griffith, I hadnever really understood your
case, I think fully, and I and Ihad never understood this idea
of the comparison that waspresent until I read your book,
because I think it's somethingthat the average American has
(18:36):
never heard of.
I, you know, I I would considermyself a well-educated person.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
I was like I've never heard of this before, like I
think if you haven't lived it orgone to law school, you might
not be aware of it and and Imean the, the other part of of
the main part of our argumentwas um, yes, the father and the
son were guilty and thishappened, but there is
(19:06):
foreseeable misuse of this.
And that means when there isforeseeable misuse and Beretta
knows this is going to happenover and over and over again,
they need to change the designof the gun to help prevent the
harm that is caused by theirproduct.
(19:28):
And that's, in California,product safety.
You know product law.
And the Beretta lawyers argueif you give any you know bit of
(19:58):
blame to the gun, you're sayingyou're reducing the personal
responsibility of the father andthe son.
And we just didn't buy that.
But some of the jurors did.
We almost lost the case.
There were three trials.
The first was we seemed to havelost and then we appealed it
and there had been jurymisconduct.
The second case, we came veryclose to winning and it was
(20:23):
finally a hung jury.
And the third case, they hadlearned what can help convince a
juror juries and they won.
And in a civil case you neednine To win, you need the votes
of nine out of 12 jurors.
(20:44):
And they got them in the thirdcase.
So but even then, I thinkbringing the case was a good
idea, even though we lost.
There was a lot of mediaattention to the case and I
think it may have helped somepeople realize I better store my
(21:05):
gun safely or this could happen, and even that media attention
is valuable.
And also other lawyers learnedhow we argued the case and John
Lowy did a great job.
And other lawyers did a greatjob and they learned from how we
(21:28):
had done it and they won othercases.
Unfortunately, ours was thefirst case to argue that a gun
is defective without thesesafety features, and so the vice
president of the NationalShooting Sports Foundation,
(21:49):
Larry Keene, came and became alawyer for Beretta USA and the
National Shooting SportsFoundation is the gun industry's
trade association Association,and at that time many cities
(22:16):
were also suing gun makers.
So the gun industry startedtrying to get Congress to pass a
gun industry immunity bill,which eventually passed after
our case was out of court.
If it had passed while our casewas out of court, If it had
passed while our case was stillin court, it could have
potentially kicked our case outof court even though judges had
(22:43):
ruled it was a legitimate caseand should be tried.
So all that is a part of thebook.
It's.
It's quite a struggle just tokeep it in court.
So that's that's a big problemand it's a top priority of Biden
President who have been harmedby gun industry negligence to
(23:12):
sue the gun industry, gunmanufacturers or dealers, and
we'll see if that stands up inthe current Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Thanks for walking us through that, because I think
it illustrates just the amountof courage that it took to keep,
not only bring the case in thefirst place, but then also
persist throughout all thesedifferent phases.
And I'm wondering personally,what was it like to be a part of
(23:44):
the case that it seems like youlost but but you have another
opportunity.
But then there's misconduct andyou kind of have to keep going
along a path that you don't knowhow it's going to end.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Well, it was frustrating to listen to the
arguments of the Beretta lawyers.
I thought they misrepresentedit a lot and I thought their
expert witnesses lied a lot anddeceived the jurors.
And after those trials thelawyers were able, and I was
(24:27):
able, to go and listen to whatthe jurors thought and some of
them had clearly been deceived,we thought.
But we got a lot of support toofrom many wonderful activists,
(24:48):
activists and I and I recognizethere was a great deal of
community of wonderful activistsand I, I, I felt good about
many of the people we met andwho supported us.
Um, so that was a benefit.
But you know, eventually, as Isay in the book, I started to
feel chest pains, I was tooangry as from as a benefit.
(25:10):
But you know, eventually, as Isay in the book, I started to
feel chest pains, I was tooangry as from what I was
learning and eventually had tohave eight stints put in and had
to learn try to learn how tocontrol anger from what I was
learning.
So that too is a part of thebook.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And I think that one of the things and that's why I
mean that it's really anintimate story not just about
you, but also about your nowex-wife, kenzo's mother and his
brother, and what kind of he iseven going through, as well as,
I think, in a way that is verykind the, the young man who you
(25:51):
give the pseudonym of mark to,who shot kenzo.
I think that you know thatthere, the book, I think, makes
a very good case that even hadyou won the case, there were no
physical winners here, right,and there was going to be no
resolution in that sense, butthere was still the sense of
trying to fight for justice sothat this wouldn't happen to
(26:13):
other people that was going tobe the win, not a monetary
amount, not, you know somethingpunitive?
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Yeah, we were.
We brought the lawsuit and, foryou know, to prevent this kind
of thing from happening again,not for monetary gain, and
Beretta kept trying to make itsound like, oh, we were in it
for the money.
But if we were in it for themoney, we wouldn't have gone to
(26:40):
Brady, you know, I mean becauseBrady is a gun violence
prevention organization andthat's what they do very well.
So and so, eventually we youknow I turned to joining a gun
(27:06):
violence prevention coalition inCalifornia and that
organization passed manyimportant laws that made
California the state with thestrongest gun laws in the
country.
But they passed two laws thatwere very important to us Mary
(27:32):
Lee and Charlie Bleck's son hadbeen killed in while he was in
New York City with a cheap junkgun a Saturday night special and
they helped pass what's calledthe Unsafe Gun Act SB 15, and
(27:56):
setting safety standards forhandguns sold in California.
And a few years later we passedSB 489, requiring safety
features on handguns, such as achamber-loaded indicator and a
magazine disconnect safetydevice.
(28:18):
A chamber-loaded indicator is alittle thing that sticks up when
there's a bullet in the chamberand tells you it warns you that
there's still a bullet in thechamber chamber and tells you,
warns you, that there's still abullet in the chamber.
A magazine disconnect safetydevice prevents the gun from
firing when the magazine hasbeen removed because people
think, oh, I've taken away thedevice that feeds bullets into
(28:44):
the gun.
I must have unloaded it, butthere may still be a bullet in
the chamber, and so sometimespeople pull the trigger thinking
it's unloaded but it isn't, andthat saved many lives.
So you know, these laws helpedreduce unintentional gun death
(29:11):
by two-thirds in California,according to the CDC data, and
when those safer guns were soldin the rest of the country by
the gun industry, the rate ofunintentional gun deaths
declined there as well.
So in the early 90s there were500 unintentional gun deaths
(29:42):
nationally.
So that's a difference of abouta thousand, now that the
counting of unintentional gundeaths is not very accurate, but
(30:05):
clearly many, many gun deaths,unintentional gun deaths, were
prevented by these laws.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
So that I think to to me and to us, that's very
important and great successstory ultimately it's an
incredible success story andit's huge, especially um just to
know, as you said, there's somany.
(30:35):
It took so much um for you tokind of stay in this fight and
you would be totally blank, notblamed if you didn't want to.
Um, and obviously you know thetitle of the book is who killed
kenzo?
and I think to jj's point.
You really broaden thenarrative in a way that many
people would say, oh, the answeris obvious, but then you
(30:56):
ultimately say that it was theshooter, it was the shooter's
father, it was the gun industry,it was congress, and you even
include yourself in some way andI'm wondering if, possibly, you
could walk us through how youcame to include each of those
entities and what we can learnfrom it, or what you're hoping
the reader will take away fromyou answering who killed Kenzo
(31:19):
in the way that you did.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Well, the you know, let's go through those.
The father stored his gun wherehis son could get it.
He stored it loaded and hestored it with a bullet in the
(31:46):
chamber and he failed to trainhis son adequately.
So those are horrible mistakes.
His son had learned some thingsand been told not to touch the
(32:08):
gun for one, yet he went downand got it um and um.
He he had learned some enoughabout guns to know how to remove
the magazine and bring it backand he had been told a few
things.
But he was playing with a gunwhich he shouldn't have been
(32:31):
doing.
So in their trial testimonythey both, you know, admitted
that they had made horriblemistakes.
The gun maker, beretta, had soldthe gun to civilians that
lacked the safety features itshould have had for civilians.
(32:52):
They never tested it to see howit worked in civilian homes,
but it didn't work well incivilian homes.
You know, many people weredying in unintentional gun
deaths.
Many people were dying inunintentional gun deaths.
(33:15):
And they just kept blaming theyou know, each time blaming the
shooter.
They were much like the autoindustry which used to blame the
driver every time an accidenthappened.
But similar kinds of accidentshappen over and over and over.
(33:37):
There is foreseeable.
These accidents are foreseeable.
Something can be done about it.
Even if the driver or the gunuser is doing something wrong,
(33:59):
there can be a product changethat helps reduce the harm and
that's happened with automobiles.
When car makers were forced to,you know, put padded dashboards
and safety glass and seat beltsand so forth, the number of
(34:20):
deaths per mile driven droppedby 80%.
But we don't have those kindsof standards on firearms.
A car has, you know, a lock.
On the door you need a key andthen on the ignition to start up
(34:45):
the car you need a key andthat's so that unauthorized
people, including minors, cannotget in and drive the car.
We and you need a license andyou need a lot of training.
You don't have that in cars andwe need some regulation of cars
.
There's an agency thatregulates cars.
(35:06):
You don't have that on guns,excuse me.
So we need better regulation.
We also need a change inculture around guns, including
safe storage and Brady andfamily fire is a high.
(35:30):
I highly recommend it and I gogo around and tell people about
in family fire frequently.
I think it's very valuable.
It's a wonderful set ofactivities and, you know,
(35:50):
learning tools.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Well, and I appreciate kind of how you
mentioned and it's it's funnybecause in the book you even
mentioned in kind of a firstconversation with John Lowy, who
eventually became VP of legalat Brady, the fear that maybe
you both had when they startedto standardize seatbelts of
driving over a bridge, that I'mgoing to have to unlock my
(36:15):
seatbelt every time I drove overa bridge, which is something
I'm of a generation that grew upwith.
That was a norm that you mustwear your seatbelt.
It was unheard of that.
You didn't and so I've.
I'd never heard that before ofpeople being afraid of wearing
their seatbelts over over abridge.
And so I think when youmentioned repeatedly that the
vehicle manufacturer, the carmanufacturer, responsibility and
(36:38):
norm change that happened there, that is mentioned throughout
the book anecdotally andotherwise I think is so
important because I think itpoints to the norm change that
things like Brady's program ofend family fire or normalizing
safe storage, why that's soimportant but why you know it
takes a culture change, takes alot to do.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Yeah, exactly, people are resistant to change and you
know there's good reason oftento be skeptical.
But something like this thatrepeatedly ends in injury or
death, you better take a look atwhat can be done about it.
(37:19):
And instead the gun industryand lobbyists go to Congress and
they block every kind of gunsafety bill that they can that
comes up and that's dangerousfor all of us.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
But I'm actually going to end by quoting John
Lowy and then asking you perhapsan unfair question, but it's
it's moderators' privilege guessor or control.
They can't take the zoom fromme.
Um so John Lowy, and hisclosing remarks during the very
first trial, said quote.
(37:59):
I would say to you, the reasonwe have the law, as it is, about
a product maker's duty to dowhat it can to prevent
foreseeable injuries caused byforeseeable misuse, is because
there are Cliffords all aroundthis country there were before
Kenzo died and there are todayand there are marks in those
households across the country.
The Berettas of this world knowthat if, every time this happens
(38:21):
, they can escape theirresponsibility by putting it off
on the Cliffords and the marks,there will be no change, there
will be no more safety and therewill always be more Kenzo Dix's
.
And despite you then losing thecase overall against Beretta,
you continue to fight in thisongoing battle.
(38:41):
Ongoing battle is the subtitleof your book, and I'm wondering
for you then, in kind of, in aworld where there is no more
misuse, maybe there are no moreClifford's and Mark's, and then
there certainly are no morekillings of Kenzo's, what would
be a finished battle for you?
What would that look like foryou to be able to say the
battle's done?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
I don't think this battle is is done by any means,
unfortunately is done by anymeans, unfortunately.
In fact, in the US, our wholesystem gives an extra benefit to
(39:25):
states with small populations,in rural states, and that means
with small populations in ruralstates, and that means people
who want good gun laws have tobe very active.
I mean, there are many people,many gun owners, who want strong
(39:47):
gun laws.
For example, they don't wantviolent criminals to be able to
easily obtain guns.
And yet, you know,unfortunately, the modern, many
modern legislators who takemoney from the gun lobby won't
(40:10):
pass those safety bills, such asrequiring background checks on
every gun sale.
And you know now they've madeAR-15s that are so much more
(40:31):
powerful and dangerous than theguns we used to have.
So I was just listening to oneof your podcasts with Mr Joy
from North Carolina.
Yes, David Joy joy from northcarolina, yes, david joy.
(41:00):
Um, and you know I, I, myfather, was from virginia and
when I got was about 12, hebought me a single shot, um, you
know, rifle and took me huntinga little.
But he was very much for safetyand so anyway, we're at great
(41:24):
risk and greater and greaterrisk.
The leading cause of death, asyou know, of people under 20 is
a gun, guns.
So we have a long way to go,but and we have reduced rates of
(41:45):
unintentional gun death greatlyand that's a great, great
progress in that particular typeof gun death.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
I want to thank you so much, griffin, again for this
talk, for coming on, for yourbook, for sharing Kenzo with us,
and I thought that perhaps oneof the best ways that we could
possibly close out thisgathering is by quoting a poem
that Kenzo wrote that you citewithin the text, if that would
be all right, and so I'm goingto try to read this with all
(42:23):
together at once, but I thinkit's just a really good reminder
that when we're talking aboutthe people that we've lost in
this, that we've lost somereally amazing people, that when
we're talking about the peoplethat we've lost in this, that
we've lost some really amazingpeople.
And so this is something thatKenzo wrote for a high school
English assignment entitled IBelieve.
I believe in the mind and itsunknown wonders, the lifelong
friendship, the drive to thebasket, the importance of humor,
(42:45):
the midnight snack, but I don'tbelieve in the economy and
working only for the money.
I believe in seizing the day, Ibelieve in a good night's sleep
, I believe in relaxation andmeditation and I believe in
random, sibling, playful fightsthat bring people closer and the
importance of sister andbrotherhood and family and
(43:06):
throughout life.
So thank you for sharing very,very much.
What a wonderful, wonderful sonyou had, perfect.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Thank you very much All right, thank you all.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
With that love to you all.
Thanks so much.
Thank you for being in thisfight.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Good night.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Hey want to share with the podcast.
Listeners can now get in touchwith us here at Red Blue Brady
via phone or text message.
Simply call or text us at480-744-3452 with your thoughts.
Questions concerns ideas, catpictures, whatever.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Thanks for listening.
As always, brady's lifesavingwork in Congress, the courts and
communities across the countryis made possible thanks to you.
For more information on Bradyor how to get involved in the
fight against gun violence,please like and subscribe to the
podcast.
Get in touch with us atBradyUnitedorg or on social at
BradyBuzz.
Be brave and remember.
(44:06):
Take action, not science.
This is the Legal Disclaimer, where I tell you
that the views, thoughts andopinions shared on this podcast
belong solely to our guests andhosts, and not necessarily Brady
or Brady's affiliates.
Please note this podcastcontains discussions of violence
that some people may finddisturbing.
It's okay, we find itdisturbing too.
Hey everybody, welcome back toanother episode of Red Bull and
(00:45):
Brady.
I'm one of your hosts, jj.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And I'm Kelly, your other host.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And today we are sitting down with another
extended episode for you.
This is a version of a liveevent we held with the great
Griffin Dick.
But if you want to see thewhole thing uncut, you can just
go over to Brady's YouTubechannel link's in the
description of this episode.
See the whole thing.
But if not, can just go over toBrady's YouTube channel link's
in the description of thisepisode.
See the whole thing.
But if not, I guess for youtoday, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I definitely think the whole thing is worth
watching because Griffin is justan incredible advocate.
It really shows just how heroica father is in his love for his
child.
But if you're with us for thepodcast today, we're going to
learn a lot more about what itmeans to try to hold the gun
industry accountable after aloved one in this case,
(01:33):
griffin's son is killed due togun violence.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Well.
Thank you, jj and Kelly, forinviting me to your wonderful
Red, blue and Brady podcast.
The book is who Killed Kenzo,the Loss of a Son and the
Ongoing Battle for Gun Safety.
The book begins in May of 1994when my wife Lynn and I got a
(02:07):
call from Oakland Children'sHospital.
They said to go thereimmediately but wouldn't tell us
more.
So we rushed there wonderingwhat had happened, and I'll
start reading from there.
What had happened and I'llstart reading from there.
(02:29):
At the hospital they pointed usto a cold white waiting room
and told us to sit down.
We fidgeted and worried.
Occasionally we tried to saysomething, but there was nothing
to say.
Finally a doctor came in.
Are you the Dix's?
Finally a doctor came in.
Are you the Dix's?
He took a deep breath and satdown.
(02:50):
I'm Dr Stephen Yedlin.
He began your son was with hisfriend when the boy got a gun in
his house and accidentally shotyour son.
Apparently he didn't realizethe gun was still loaded.
The bullet went through theshoulder and into his heart.
(03:10):
They called 911.
When your son got here he dideverything we could but we
couldn't save him.
I didn't believe him.
Wasn't there something thisdoctor should be doing right now
Ben asked can we see Kenzo?
(03:31):
No, he's been taken out of theemergency room.
You can't see him.
I'm sorry, it's hospital policy.
Kenzo was gone.
Kenzo had died.
We couldn't see him.
Now I skip to a later part ofthe chapter.
(03:53):
When Kenzo's friend Mark apseudonym was taken to the
police station that evening hewas asked to explain in writing
what had happened.
He wrote his story on six pagesof lined paper in his kids
printing like a schoolassignment.
(04:15):
This is part of what he wrote.
When we got to my house we wentto my room and sat in there for
a couple of minutes andlistened to one of my tapes.
Kenzo loaded and shot theSheridan BB gun at some birds.
I loaded it and shot it.
Once I went downstairs alone tomy dad's and mom's room, I
unzipped the bag that carrieshis Beretta, released the clip,
(04:38):
unzipped a second compartment ofthe bag and took an empty clip
out, ran upstairs to my bedroom,put the clip in.
Kenzo turned around with theSheraton in his hand.
He said something.
I flicked the safety up and bam, he was shot in the arm, with
(04:59):
his face in my futon on hisknees.
I tried to pick him up to takehim to the living room.
I left him.
My mother ran to see whathappened.
I screamed help.
I shot Kenzo.
My mother said what, what?
Before we went to bed that night, lynn said we should go to
(05:22):
Mark's house the next day toconsole him and tell him.
We knew it was not intentional.
I didn't want to face it, but Iknew she was right.
That night I lay in bed,squirming, sweating and
sleepless.
My body wanted to defend itself.
My body wanted to defend itself.
(05:44):
It wanted to protect Kenzo.
In the morning we called to askif we could go over and then we
drove to Mark's house.
A short woman I had never metanswered the door and said she
was Mark's stepmother.
Her face was chalk white andpuffy, her swollen eyes, bleary
(06:06):
and tearful.
She brought us into the livingroom and asked us to sit.
We couldn't sit.
Mark's father came in, his eyesred.
I'd met him only once, briefly,when I dropped Kenzo off there.
He ran his palm over his crewcut and told us how sorry he was
(06:28):
.
Then Mark staggered into theliving room head down.
I barely recognized him as thegood-looking kid I knew.
His sallow face was streakedwith tears, his shirt drenched
in sweat stuck to his back.
(06:49):
Lynn blurted Mark and put herarms around him.
He embraced her and broke downHis shoulders.
He gasped between loud sobs.
Over and over he cried I'msorry, I love Kenzo, I'm sorry.
Then I hugged Mark too.
His muscular body dripped sweatand tears.
(07:12):
He wailed I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
He was trapped in the worstnightmare imaginable.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
And I thank you for writing it and then thank you
for reliving it and telling itand even in just your reading of
it.
Now, folks who have been in theunfortunate position that you
are in of being a survivor, whohave come on this podcast before
, have made it a point to let usknow that it doesn't get easier
(07:42):
.
It gets different maybe, but itdoesn't get easier telling this
.
So thank you for sharing whathappened to Kenzo with us.
Before we continue to maybemove into the aftermath and then
the actual then formation ofthis book, I wonder just really
briefly, if we can talk aboutwho Kenzo was as a kid a little
bit, if you could tell us alittle bit about Kenzo, if you
(08:04):
don't mind sharing a little moreabout him.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
He was a complete joy .
Um, he was fun and curious andeverybody around him liked him
so, and he would leave littlestickies around saying I have to
get up in the morning to go tobasketball practice, you know,
please, you know, give me a ridehere and there or something.
(08:29):
And he would write.
He liked writing poems andthings.
And he wrote a 10-year planthat we discovered after it was
in a school assignment, but wediscovered it on his desk after
he had died and that's writtenin the book.
So I, you know, I could go onand on.
(08:51):
We, we, we, just we really misshim because he was, in part,
just because of who he was andwhat a joy to us he was.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Thanks for sharing a little bit about who Kenzo was,
because one of the things thatwe always like to do is make
sure we don't just focus on howpeople die, but also who they
were.
So thank you for sharing yourson with us, and it's
interesting that you said heliked to write, because, of
course, you wrote a book andyou've been doing this work for
(09:23):
a long time and so wondering ifyou could share what prompted
you to decide that you weregoing to share this story in
such an intimate way at thisparticular time.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
You know, not so long after Kenzo died, I began to
learn about all the loopholes inour gun laws and I was very
curious about how this couldhappen.
And immediately I was convincedthis should never happen.
And I began to learn that thegun lobby makes it easy for
(10:01):
criminals and underage youth toget guns and they market guns,
playing on people's fears, andthey keep the Bureau of Alcohol,
tobacco and Firearmsunderfunded and unable to even
enforce the weak gun laws thatwe do have.
(10:22):
And I thought, gee, peopleshould know about all this.
And so that was a long time agoand I began thinking maybe I'll
write a book about this.
And then things kept happening.
I met more and more people,more victims of gun violence, or
you may call it survivors.
(10:43):
And then I went and helped bytestifying before the California
State Legislature Public SafetyCommittee in favor of a safe
storage bill and was shocked athow the gun industry's lobbyists
misrepresented the bill and howall the Republicans on the
(11:09):
Public Safety Committee votedagainst a very reasonable bill.
And I was just shocked at allthe things I kept learning.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
And then Brady lawyer John Lowy, brady lawyer, john
Lowy, agreed to bring ourlawsuit against Beretta USA
buckets, if you will.
It seems that it's about grief,it's about advocacy, it's about
guns and then it's about the UScourt system and how maybe all
of these things interact, andfailures, maybe especially on
the path of the last two buckets.
(11:54):
And so if we can focus on thoselast two, which is the, I would
say, the meat of the technicalside of the text, I wonder if
you can unpack for us the basisof the case that you and then
handgun control link and theneventually Brady brought against
Beretta, the gun manufacturer.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
When we learned about the Beretta that killed Kenzo,
we learned that it lacked aprominent chamber loaded
indicator and that the manualthat came with the gun was very
inadequate in explaining therisks of storing a gun unsafely
and in explaining even thefeatures that were on the gun.
(12:40):
We argued in the lawsuit that agun is defective without
adequate safety features such asa chamber-loaded indicator, a
built-in lock, and that led usto.
You know, the Berettasemi-automatic handgun had been
designed for the military andpolice and it wasn't really
(13:03):
designed to be originally to besold to civilians.
But the gun industry andBeretta USA had followed a
common tactic of advertising oh,this gun has been chosen by
police and law enforcement.
Therefore it's a gun you shoulduse in your home for protection
(13:25):
.
But they had never tested it tosee if ordinary homeowners
could use it properly.
It had passed a test a mud test, you know you put it in the mud
for a long time and then youtake it out and does it fire and
other extreme weather tests andso forth but they never tested
(13:50):
whether ordinary homeownerscould use it.
In fact, this gun had a tinylittle chamber loaded indicator.
They called it on the side ofthe gun for police to feel at
night, when there is a bullet inthe chamber they put their
finger on and there's a littlebump that sticks out just one
(14:11):
millimeter.
And our gun expert said I can'tfeel the difference of this.
So it really lacked when I sayit lacked a prominent chamber
loaded indicator and that wasone of the major defects of the
gun.
So, and many people think whenthey've removed the magazine
(14:37):
that has ammunition in it thatthey've unloaded the gun.
So but this boy had been to theshooting range with his father
and if he had seen a prominentchamber loaded indicator
sticking right up every time thelast bullet was fired from the
magazine and the chamber wasempty, you know it would go down
(14:59):
and go up when there's a bulletwas in the chamber.
He, you know he, would haveseen that there was still a
bullet in the chamber after heremoved the magazine.
That's what.
And we thought a safer designwould have saved kenzo's life
and prevented the death thanksfor kind of breaking down what
(15:24):
exactly was going on with thefirearm.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
that was the basis of the case, and one of the things
that comes up in the book ispeople asking OK, yes, there is
this design defect, but why notgo after the boy or the parents
instead of the manufacturer?
And you talk about that in thebook and I'm wondering if you
could share that with listeners.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Yeah, well, that's a very reasonable question.
And in fact the first thing theBrady lawyers did was to sue
the father, because everybodyrecognized that both the father
and his son had made horriblemistakes.
So we thought the father andthe son and the design of the
(16:10):
gun made by and sold by BerettaUSA, all had helped cause
Kenzo's death.
Um, so um.
And when in the court theBeretta lawyers said all of the
(16:38):
blame should go only to thefather and to his son, and we
said we agreed that they were,they had helped cause Kenzo's
death.
But we said the design of thegun is, and the more you blame
(17:26):
the gun, the less guilty thefather and son is.
Well, to us that didn't make anysense because we thought they
were all guilty, uh, and theywere all had caused Kenzo's
death.
Uh, so that and and jurors inthe thinking that way.
That didn't make sense to usand that was a major problem in
(17:51):
the way the judge had ruled thatthat had to be applied.
It's sort of a pro-corporateproblem.
That's under California law andsome other states.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
And I have to say, even as someone who has worked
now on gun violence preventionfor several years, I had never
quite understood.
I'll be honest, griffith, I hadnever really understood your
case, I think fully, and I and Ihad never understood this idea
of the comparison that waspresent until I read your book,
because I think it's somethingthat the average American has
(18:36):
never heard of.
I, you know, I I would considermyself a well-educated person.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
I was like I've never heard of this before, like I
think if you haven't lived it orgone to law school, you might
not be aware of it and and Imean the, the other part of of
the main part of our argumentwas um, yes, the father and the
son were guilty and thishappened, but there is
(19:06):
foreseeable misuse of this.
And that means when there isforeseeable misuse and Beretta
knows this is going to happenover and over and over again,
they need to change the designof the gun to help prevent the
harm that is caused by theirproduct.
(19:28):
And that's, in California,product safety.
You know product law.
And the Beretta lawyers argueif you give any you know bit of
(19:58):
blame to the gun, you're sayingyou're reducing the personal
responsibility of the father andthe son.
And we just didn't buy that.
But some of the jurors did.
We almost lost the case.
There were three trials.
The first was we seemed to havelost and then we appealed it
and there had been jurymisconduct.
The second case, we came veryclose to winning and it was
(20:23):
finally a hung jury.
And the third case, they hadlearned what can help convince a
juror juries and they won.
And in a civil case you neednine To win, you need the votes
of nine out of 12 jurors.
(20:44):
And they got them in the thirdcase.
So but even then, I thinkbringing the case was a good
idea, even though we lost.
There was a lot of mediaattention to the case and I
think it may have helped somepeople realize I better store my
(21:05):
gun safely or this could happen, and even that media attention
is valuable.
And also other lawyers learnedhow we argued the case and John
Lowy did a great job.
And other lawyers did a greatjob and they learned from how we
(21:28):
had done it and they won othercases.
Unfortunately, ours was thefirst case to argue that a gun
is defective without thesesafety features, and so the vice
president of the NationalShooting Sports Foundation,
(21:49):
Larry Keene, came and became alawyer for Beretta USA and the
National Shooting SportsFoundation is the gun industry's
trade association Association,and at that time many cities
(22:16):
were also suing gun makers.
So the gun industry startedtrying to get Congress to pass a
gun industry immunity bill,which eventually passed after
our case was out of court.
If it had passed while our casewas out of court, If it had
passed while our case was stillin court, it could have
potentially kicked our case outof court even though judges had
(22:43):
ruled it was a legitimate caseand should be tried.
So all that is a part of thebook.
It's.
It's quite a struggle just tokeep it in court.
So that's that's a big problemand it's a top priority of Biden
President who have been harmedby gun industry negligence to
(23:12):
sue the gun industry, gunmanufacturers or dealers, and
we'll see if that stands up inthe current Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Thanks for walking us through that, because I think
it illustrates just the amountof courage that it took to keep,
not only bring the case in thefirst place, but then also
persist throughout all thesedifferent phases.
And I'm wondering personally,what was it like to be a part of
(23:44):
the case that it seems like youlost but but you have another
opportunity.
But then there's misconduct andyou kind of have to keep going
along a path that you don't knowhow it's going to end.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Well, it was frustrating to listen to the
arguments of the Beretta lawyers.
I thought they misrepresentedit a lot and I thought their
expert witnesses lied a lot anddeceived the jurors.
And after those trials thelawyers were able, and I was
(24:27):
able, to go and listen to whatthe jurors thought and some of
them had clearly been deceived,we thought.
But we got a lot of support toofrom many wonderful activists,
(24:48):
activists and I and I recognizethere was a great deal of
community of wonderful activistsand I, I, I felt good about
many of the people we met andwho supported us.
Um, so that was a benefit.
But you know, eventually, as Isay in the book, I started to
feel chest pains, I was tooangry as from as a benefit.
(25:10):
But you know, eventually, as Isay in the book, I started to
feel chest pains, I was tooangry as from what I was
learning and eventually had tohave eight stints put in and had
to learn try to learn how tocontrol anger from what I was
learning.
So that too is a part of thebook.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And I think that one of the things and that's why I
mean that it's really anintimate story not just about
you, but also about your nowex-wife, kenzo's mother and his
brother, and what kind of he iseven going through, as well as,
I think, in a way that is verykind the, the young man who you
(25:51):
give the pseudonym of mark to,who shot kenzo.
I think that you know thatthere, the book, I think, makes
a very good case that even hadyou won the case, there were no
physical winners here, right,and there was going to be no
resolution in that sense, butthere was still the sense of
trying to fight for justice sothat this wouldn't happen to
(26:13):
other people that was going tobe the win, not a monetary
amount, not, you know somethingpunitive?
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Yeah, we were.
We brought the lawsuit and, foryou know, to prevent this kind
of thing from happening again,not for monetary gain, and
Beretta kept trying to make itsound like, oh, we were in it
for the money.
But if we were in it for themoney, we wouldn't have gone to
(26:40):
Brady, you know, I mean becauseBrady is a gun violence
prevention organization andthat's what they do very well.
So and so, eventually we youknow I turned to joining a gun
(27:06):
violence prevention coalition inCalifornia and that
organization passed manyimportant laws that made
California the state with thestrongest gun laws in the
country.
But they passed two laws thatwere very important to us Mary
(27:32):
Lee and Charlie Bleck's son hadbeen killed in while he was in
New York City with a cheap junkgun a Saturday night special and
they helped pass what's calledthe Unsafe Gun Act SB 15, and
(27:56):
setting safety standards forhandguns sold in California.
And a few years later we passedSB 489, requiring safety
features on handguns, such as achamber-loaded indicator and a
magazine disconnect safetydevice.
(28:18):
A chamber-loaded indicator is alittle thing that sticks up when
there's a bullet in the chamberand tells you it warns you that
there's still a bullet in thechamber chamber and tells you,
warns you, that there's still abullet in the chamber.
A magazine disconnect safetydevice prevents the gun from
firing when the magazine hasbeen removed because people
think, oh, I've taken away thedevice that feeds bullets into
(28:44):
the gun.
I must have unloaded it, butthere may still be a bullet in
the chamber, and so sometimespeople pull the trigger thinking
it's unloaded but it isn't, andthat saved many lives.
So you know, these laws helpedreduce unintentional gun death
(29:11):
by two-thirds in California,according to the CDC data, and
when those safer guns were soldin the rest of the country by
the gun industry, the rate ofunintentional gun deaths
declined there as well.
So in the early 90s there were500 unintentional gun deaths
(29:42):
nationally.
So that's a difference of abouta thousand, now that the
counting of unintentional gundeaths is not very accurate, but
(30:05):
clearly many, many gun deaths,unintentional gun deaths, were
prevented by these laws.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
So that I think to to me and to us, that's very
important and great successstory ultimately it's an
incredible success story andit's huge, especially um just to
know, as you said, there's somany.
(30:35):
It took so much um for you tokind of stay in this fight and
you would be totally blank, notblamed if you didn't want to.
Um, and obviously you know thetitle of the book is who killed
kenzo?
and I think to jj's point.
You really broaden thenarrative in a way that many
people would say, oh, the answeris obvious, but then you
(30:56):
ultimately say that it was theshooter, it was the shooter's
father, it was the gun industry,it was congress, and you even
include yourself in some way andI'm wondering if, possibly, you
could walk us through how youcame to include each of those
entities and what we can learnfrom it, or what you're hoping
the reader will take away fromyou answering who killed Kenzo
(31:19):
in the way that you did.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Well, the you know, let's go through those.
The father stored his gun wherehis son could get it.
He stored it loaded and hestored it with a bullet in the
(31:46):
chamber and he failed to trainhis son adequately.
So those are horrible mistakes.
His son had learned some thingsand been told not to touch the
(32:08):
gun for one, yet he went downand got it um and um.
He he had learned some enoughabout guns to know how to remove
the magazine and bring it backand he had been told a few
things.
But he was playing with a gunwhich he shouldn't have been
(32:31):
doing.
So in their trial testimonythey both, you know, admitted
that they had made horriblemistakes.
The gun maker, beretta, had soldthe gun to civilians that
lacked the safety features itshould have had for civilians.
(32:52):
They never tested it to see howit worked in civilian homes,
but it didn't work well incivilian homes.
You know, many people weredying in unintentional gun
deaths.
Many people were dying inunintentional gun deaths.
(33:15):
And they just kept blaming theyou know, each time blaming the
shooter.
They were much like the autoindustry which used to blame the
driver every time an accidenthappened.
But similar kinds of accidentshappen over and over and over.
(33:37):
There is foreseeable.
These accidents are foreseeable.
Something can be done about it.
Even if the driver or the gunuser is doing something wrong,
(33:59):
there can be a product changethat helps reduce the harm and
that's happened with automobiles.
When car makers were forced to,you know, put padded dashboards
and safety glass and seat beltsand so forth, the number of
(34:20):
deaths per mile driven droppedby 80%.
But we don't have those kindsof standards on firearms.
A car has, you know, a lock.
On the door you need a key andthen on the ignition to start up
(34:45):
the car you need a key andthat's so that unauthorized
people, including minors, cannotget in and drive the car.
We and you need a license andyou need a lot of training.
You don't have that in cars andwe need some regulation of cars
.
There's an agency thatregulates cars.
(35:06):
You don't have that on guns,excuse me.
So we need better regulation.
We also need a change inculture around guns, including
safe storage and Brady andfamily fire is a high.
(35:30):
I highly recommend it and I gogo around and tell people about
in family fire frequently.
I think it's very valuable.
It's a wonderful set ofactivities and, you know,
(35:50):
learning tools.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Well, and I appreciate kind of how you
mentioned and it's it's funnybecause in the book you even
mentioned in kind of a firstconversation with John Lowy, who
eventually became VP of legalat Brady, the fear that maybe
you both had when they startedto standardize seatbelts of
driving over a bridge, that I'mgoing to have to unlock my
(36:15):
seatbelt every time I drove overa bridge, which is something
I'm of a generation that grew upwith.
That was a norm that you mustwear your seatbelt.
It was unheard of that.
You didn't and so I've.
I'd never heard that before ofpeople being afraid of wearing
their seatbelts over over abridge.
And so I think when youmentioned repeatedly that the
vehicle manufacturer, the carmanufacturer, responsibility and
(36:38):
norm change that happened there, that is mentioned throughout
the book anecdotally andotherwise I think is so
important because I think itpoints to the norm change that
things like Brady's program ofend family fire or normalizing
safe storage, why that's soimportant but why you know it
takes a culture change, takes alot to do.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Yeah, exactly, people are resistant to change and you
know there's good reason oftento be skeptical.
But something like this thatrepeatedly ends in injury or
death, you better take a look atwhat can be done about it.
(37:19):
And instead the gun industryand lobbyists go to Congress and
they block every kind of gunsafety bill that they can that
comes up and that's dangerousfor all of us.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
But I'm actually going to end by quoting John
Lowy and then asking you perhapsan unfair question, but it's
it's moderators' privilege guessor or control.
They can't take the zoom fromme.
Um so John Lowy, and hisclosing remarks during the very
first trial, said quote.
(37:59):
I would say to you, the reasonwe have the law, as it is, about
a product maker's duty to dowhat it can to prevent
foreseeable injuries caused byforeseeable misuse, is because
there are Cliffords all aroundthis country there were before
Kenzo died and there are todayand there are marks in those
households across the country.
The Berettas of this world knowthat if, every time this happens
(38:21):
, they can escape theirresponsibility by putting it off
on the Cliffords and the marks,there will be no change, there
will be no more safety and therewill always be more Kenzo Dix's
.
And despite you then losing thecase overall against Beretta,
you continue to fight in thisongoing battle.
(38:41):
Ongoing battle is the subtitleof your book, and I'm wondering
for you then, in kind of, in aworld where there is no more
misuse, maybe there are no moreClifford's and Mark's, and then
there certainly are no morekillings of Kenzo's, what would
be a finished battle for you?
What would that look like foryou to be able to say the
battle's done?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
I don't think this battle is is done by any means,
unfortunately is done by anymeans, unfortunately.
In fact, in the US, our wholesystem gives an extra benefit to
(39:25):
states with small populations,in rural states, and that means
with small populations in ruralstates, and that means people
who want good gun laws have tobe very active.
I mean, there are many people,many gun owners, who want strong
(39:47):
gun laws.
For example, they don't wantviolent criminals to be able to
easily obtain guns.
And yet, you know,unfortunately, the modern, many
modern legislators who takemoney from the gun lobby won't
(40:10):
pass those safety bills, such asrequiring background checks on
every gun sale.
And you know now they've madeAR-15s that are so much more
(40:31):
powerful and dangerous than theguns we used to have.
So I was just listening to oneof your podcasts with Mr Joy
from North Carolina.
Yes, David Joy joy from northcarolina, yes, david joy.
(41:00):
Um, and you know I, I, myfather, was from virginia and
when I got was about 12, hebought me a single shot, um, you
know, rifle and took me huntinga little.
But he was very much for safetyand so anyway, we're at great
(41:24):
risk and greater and greaterrisk.
The leading cause of death, asyou know, of people under 20 is
a gun, guns.
So we have a long way to go,but and we have reduced rates of
(41:45):
unintentional gun death greatlyand that's a great, great
progress in that particular typeof gun death.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
I want to thank you so much, griffin, again for this
talk, for coming on, for yourbook, for sharing Kenzo with us,
and I thought that perhaps oneof the best ways that we could
possibly close out thisgathering is by quoting a poem
that Kenzo wrote that you citewithin the text, if that would
be all right, and so I'm goingto try to read this with all
(42:23):
together at once, but I thinkit's just a really good reminder
that when we're talking aboutthe people that we've lost in
this, that we've lost somereally amazing people, that when
we're talking about the peoplethat we've lost in this, that
we've lost some really amazingpeople.
And so this is something thatKenzo wrote for a high school
English assignment entitled IBelieve.
I believe in the mind and itsunknown wonders, the lifelong
friendship, the drive to thebasket, the importance of humor,
(42:45):
the midnight snack, but I don'tbelieve in the economy and
working only for the money.
I believe in seizing the day, Ibelieve in a good night's sleep
, I believe in relaxation andmeditation and I believe in
random, sibling, playful fightsthat bring people closer and the
importance of sister andbrotherhood and family and
(43:06):
throughout life.
So thank you for sharing very,very much.
What a wonderful, wonderful sonyou had, perfect.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Thank you very much All right, thank you all.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
With that love to you all.
Thanks so much.
Thank you for being in thisfight.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Good night.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Hey want to share with the podcast.
Listeners can now get in touchwith us here at Red Blue Brady
via phone or text message.
Simply call or text us at480-744-3452 with your thoughts.
Questions concerns ideas, catpictures, whatever.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Thanks for listening.
As always, brady's lifesavingwork in Congress, the courts and
communities across the countryis made possible thanks to you.
For more information on Bradyor how to get involved in the
fight against gun violence,please like and subscribe to the
podcast.
Get in touch with us atBradyUnitedorg or on social at
BradyBuzz.
Be brave and remember.
(44:06):
Take action, not science.
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