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.
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.
This is the Legal Disclaimer, where I tell you that the views, thoughts and opinions shared on this podcast belong solely to our guests and hosts, and not necessarily Brady or Brady's affiliates. Please note this podcast contains discussions of violence that some people may find disturbing. It's okay, we find it disturbing too. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Red Bull and Brady. I'm one of your hosts, jj.
Speaker 2:
And I'm Kelly, your other host.
Speaker 1:
And today we are sitting down with another extended episode for you. This is a version of a live event we held with the great Griffin Dick. But if you want to see the whole thing uncut, you can just go over to Brady's YouTube channel link's in the description of this episode. See the whole thing. But if not, can just go over to Brady's YouTube channel link's in the description of this episode. See the whole thing. But if not, I guess for you today, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:
I definitely think the whole thing is worth watching because Griffin is just an incredible advocate. It really shows just how heroic a father is in his love for his child. But if you're with us for the podcast today, we're going to learn a lot more about what it means to try to hold the gun industry accountable after a loved one in this case, griffin's son is killed due to gun violence.
Speaker 3:
Well. Thank you, jj and Kelly, for inviting 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 1994 when my wife Lynn and I got a call from Oakland Children's Hospital. They said to go there immediately but wouldn't tell us more. So we rushed there wondering what had happened, and I'll start reading from there. What had happened and I'll start reading from there. At the hospital they pointed us to a cold white waiting room and told us to sit down. We fidgeted and worried. Occasionally we tried to say something, 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 sat down. I'm Dr Stephen Yedlin.
Speaker 3:
He began your son was with his friend when the boy got a gun in his house and accidentally shot your son. Apparently he didn't realize the gun was still loaded. The bullet went through the shoulder and into his heart. They called 911. When your son got here he did everything we could but we couldn't save him. I didn't believe him. Wasn't there something this doctor should be doing right now Ben asked can we see Kenzo? No, he's been taken out of the emergency room. You can't see him. I'm sorry, it's hospital policy. Kenzo was gone. Kenzo had died. We couldn't see him.
Speaker 3:
Now I skip to a later part of the chapter. When Kenzo's friend Mark a pseudonym was taken to the police station that evening he was asked to explain in writing what had happened. He wrote his story on six pages of lined paper in his kids printing like a school assignment. This is part of what he wrote. When we got to my house we went to my room and sat in there for a couple of minutes and listened to one of my tapes. Kenzo loaded and shot the Sheridan BB gun at some birds. I loaded it and shot it.
Speaker 3:
Once I went downstairs alone to my dad's and mom's room, I unzipped the bag that carries his Beretta, released the clip, unzipped a second compartment of the bag and took an empty clip out, ran upstairs to my bedroom, put the clip in. Kenzo turned around with the Sheraton in his hand. He said something. I flicked the safety up and bam, he was shot in the arm, with his face in my futon on his knees. I tried to pick him up to take him to the living room. I left him. My mother ran to see what happened. I screamed help. I shot Kenzo. My mother said what, what?
Speaker 3:
Before we went to bed that night, lynn said we should go to Mark's house the next day to console him and tell him. We knew it was not intentional. I didn't want to face it, but I knew 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. It wanted to protect Kenzo.
Speaker 3:
In the morning we called to ask if we could go over and then we drove to Mark's house. A short woman I had never met answered the door and said she was Mark's stepmother. Her face was chalk white and puffy, her swollen eyes, bleary and tearful. She brought us into the living room and asked us to sit. We couldn't sit. Mark's father came in, his eyes red. I'd met him only once, briefly, when I dropped Kenzo off there. He ran his palm over his crew cut and told us how sorry he was. Then Mark staggered into the living room head down. I barely recognized him as the good-looking kid I knew. His sallow face was streaked with tears, his shirt drenched in sweat stuck to his back. Lynn blurted Mark and put her arms around him. He embraced her and broke down His shoulders. He gasped between loud sobs. Over and over he cried I'm sorry, I love Kenzo, I'm sorry. Then I hugged Mark too. His muscular body dripped sweat and tears. He wailed I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He was trapped in the worst nightmare imaginable.
Speaker 1:
And I thank you for writing it and then thank you for reliving it and telling it and even in just your reading of it. Now, folks who have been in the unfortunate position that you are in of being a survivor, who have come on this podcast before, have made it a point to let us know that it doesn't get easier. It gets different maybe, but it doesn't get easier telling this. So thank you for sharing what happened to Kenzo with us. Before we continue to maybe move into the aftermath and then the actual then formation of this book, I wonder just really briefly, if we can talk about who Kenzo was as a kid a little bit, if you could tell us a little bit about Kenzo, if you don't mind sharing a little more about him.
Speaker 3:
He was a complete joy. Um, he was fun and curious and everybody around him liked him so, and he would leave little stickies around saying I have to get up in the morning to go to basketball practice, you know, please, you know, give me a ride here and there or something. And he would write. He liked writing poems and things. And he wrote a 10-year plan that we discovered after it was in a school assignment, but we discovered it on his desk after he had died and that's written in the book. So I, you know, I could go on and on. We, we, we, just we really miss him because he was, in part, just because of who he was and what a joy to us he was.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for sharing a little bit about who Kenzo was, because one of the things that we always like to do is make sure we don't just focus on how people die, but also who they were. So thank you for sharing your son with us, and it's interesting that you said he liked to write, because, of course, you wrote a book and you've been doing this work for a long time and so wondering if you could share what prompted you to decide that you were going to share this story in such an intimate way at this particular time.
Speaker 3:
You know, not so long after Kenzo died, I began to learn about all the loopholes in our gun laws and I was very curious about how this could happen.
Speaker 3:
And immediately I was convinced this should never happen. And I began to learn that the gun lobby makes it easy for criminals and underage youth to get guns and they market guns, playing on people's fears, and they keep the Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco and Firearms underfunded and unable to even enforce the weak gun laws that we do have. And I thought, gee, people should know about all this. And so that was a long time ago and 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. And then I went and helped by testifying before the California State Legislature Public Safety Committee in favor of a safe storage bill and was shocked at how the gun industry's lobbyists misrepresented the bill and how all the Republicans on the Public Safety Committee voted against a very reasonable bill. And I was just shocked at all the things I kept learning.
Speaker 1:
And then Brady lawyer John Lowy, brady lawyer, john Lowy, agreed to bring our lawsuit 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 US court system and how maybe all of these things interact, and failures, maybe especially on the path of the last two buckets. And so if we can focus on those last two, which is the, I would say, the meat of the technical side of the text, I wonder if you can unpack for us the basis of the case that you and then handgun control link and then eventually Brady brought against Beretta, the gun manufacturer.
Speaker 3:
When we learned about the Beretta that killed Kenzo, we learned that it lacked a prominent chamber loaded indicator and that the manual that came with the gun was very inadequate in explaining the risks of storing a gun unsafely and in explaining even the features that were on the gun. We argued in the lawsuit that a gun is defective without adequate safety features such as a chamber-loaded indicator, a built-in lock, and that led us to. You know, the Beretta semi-automatic handgun had been designed for the military and police and it wasn't really designed to be originally to be sold to civilians. But the gun industry and Beretta 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 should use in your home for protection. But they had never tested it to see 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 you take it out and does it fire and other extreme weather tests and so forth but they never tested whether ordinary homeowners could use it.
Speaker 3:
In fact, this gun had a tiny little chamber loaded indicator.
Speaker 3:
They called it on the side of the gun for police to feel at night, when there is a bullet in the chamber they put their finger on and there's a little bump that sticks out just one millimeter.
Speaker 3:
And our gun expert said I can't feel the difference of this. So it really lacked when I say it lacked a prominent chamber loaded indicator and that was one of the major defects of the gun. So, and many people think when they've removed the magazine that has ammunition in it that they've unloaded the gun. So but this boy had been to the shooting range with his father and if he had seen a prominent chamber loaded indicator sticking right up every time the last bullet was fired from the magazine and the chamber was empty, you know it would go down and go up when there's a bullet was in the chamber. He, you know he, would have seen that there was still a bullet in the chamber after he removed the magazine. That's what. And we thought a safer design would have saved kenzo's life and prevented the death thanks for kind of breaking down what exactly was going on with the firearm.
Speaker 2:
that was the basis of the case, and one of the things that comes up in the book is people asking OK, yes, there is this design defect, but why not go after the boy or the parents instead of the manufacturer? And you talk about that in the book and I'm wondering if you could share that with listeners.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, well, that's a very reasonable question. And in fact the first thing the Brady lawyers did was to sue the father, because everybody recognized that both the father and his son had made horrible mistakes. So we thought the father and the son and the design of the gun made by and sold by Beretta USA, all had helped cause Kenzo's death. Um, so um. And when in the court the Beretta lawyers said all of the blame should go only to the father 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 the gun is, and the more you blame the gun, the less guilty the father and son is.
Speaker 3:
Well, to us that didn't make any sense because we thought they were all guilty, uh, and they were all had caused Kenzo's death. Uh, so that and and jurors in the thinking that way. That didn't make sense to us and that was a major problem in the way the judge had ruled that that had to be applied. It's sort of a pro-corporate problem. That's under California law and some other states.
Speaker 1:
And I have to say, even as someone who has worked now on gun violence prevention for several years, I had never quite understood. I'll be honest, griffith, I had never really understood your case, I think fully, and I and I had never understood this idea of the comparison that was present until I read your book, because I think it's something that the average American has never heard of. I, you know, I I would consider myself a well-educated person.
Speaker 3:
I was like I've never heard of this before, like I think if you haven't lived it or gone to law school, you might not be aware of it and and I mean the, the other part of of the main part of our argument was um, yes, the father and the son were guilty and this happened, but there is foreseeable misuse of this. And that means when there is foreseeable misuse and Beretta knows this is going to happen over and over and over again, they need to change the design of the gun to help prevent the harm that is caused by their product. And that's, in California, product safety. You know product law. And the Beretta lawyers argue if you give any you know bit of blame to the gun, you're saying you're reducing the personal responsibility of the father and the son. And we just didn't buy that.
Speaker 3:
But some of the jurors did. We almost lost the case. There were three trials. The first was we seemed to have lost and then we appealed it and there had been jury misconduct. The second case, we came very close to winning and it was finally a hung jury. And the third case, they had learned what can help convince a juror juries and they won. And in a civil case you need nine To win, you need the votes of nine out of 12 jurors. And they got them in the third case.
Speaker 3:
So but even then, I think bringing the case was a good idea, even though we lost. There was a lot of media attention to the case and I think it may have helped some people realize I better store my gun safely or this could happen, and even that media attention is valuable. And also other lawyers learned how we argued the case and John Lowy did a great job. And other lawyers did a great job and they learned from how we had done it and they won other cases. Unfortunately, ours was the first case to argue that a gun is defective without these safety features, and so the vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Larry Keene, came and became a lawyer for Beretta USA and the National Shooting Sports Foundation is the gun industry's trade association Association, and at that time many cities were also suing gun makers.
Speaker 3:
So the gun industry started trying 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 case was out of court, If it had passed while our case was still in court, it could have potentially kicked our case out of court even though judges had ruled it was a legitimate case and should be tried. So all that is a part of the book. It's. It's quite a struggle just to keep it in court. So that's that's a big problem and it's a top priority of Biden President who have been harmed by gun industry negligence to sue the gun industry, gun manufacturers or dealers, and we'll see if that stands up in the current Supreme Court.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for walking us through that, because I think it illustrates just the amount of courage that it took to keep, not only bring the case in the first place, but then also persist throughout all these different phases. And I'm wondering personally, what was it like to be a part of the case that it seems like you lost but but you have another opportunity. But then there's misconduct and you kind of have to keep going along a path that you don't know how it's going to end.
Speaker 3:
Well, it was frustrating to listen to the arguments of the Beretta lawyers. I thought they misrepresented it a lot and I thought their expert witnesses lied a lot and deceived the jurors. And after those trials the lawyers were able, and I was able, to go and listen to what the jurors thought and some of them had clearly been deceived, we thought. But we got a lot of support too from many wonderful activists, activists and I and I recognize there was a great deal of community of wonderful activists and I, I, I felt good about many of the people we met and who supported us. Um, so that was a benefit.
Speaker 3:
But you know, eventually, as I say in the book, I started to feel chest pains, I was too angry as from as a benefit. But you know, eventually, as I say in the book, I started to feel chest pains, I was too angry as from what I was learning and eventually had to have eight stints put in and had to learn try to learn how to control anger from what I was learning. So that too is a part of the book.
Speaker 1:
And I think that one of the things and that's why I mean that it's really an intimate story not just about you, but also about your now ex-wife, kenzo's mother and his brother, and what kind of he is even going through, as well as, I think, in a way that is very kind the, the young man who you give the pseudonym of mark to, who shot kenzo. I think that you know that there, the book, I think, makes a very good case that even had you won the case, there were no physical winners here, right, and there was going to be no resolution in that sense, but there was still the sense of trying to fight for justice so that this wouldn't happen to other people that was going to be the win, not a monetary amount, not, you know something punitive?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, we were. We brought the lawsuit and, for you know, to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, not for monetary gain, and Beretta kept trying to make it sound like, oh, we were in it for the money. But if we were in it for the money, we wouldn't have gone to Brady, you know, I mean because Brady is a gun violence prevention organization and that's what they do very well. So and so, eventually we you know I turned to joining a gun violence prevention coalition in California and that organization passed many important laws that made California the state with the strongest gun laws in the country. But they passed two laws that were very important to us Mary Lee and Charlie Bleck's son had been killed in while he was in New York City with a cheap junk gun a Saturday night special and they helped pass what's called the Unsafe Gun Act SB 15, and setting safety standards for handguns sold in California.
Speaker 3:
And a few years later we passed SB 489, requiring safety features on handguns, such as a chamber-loaded indicator and a magazine disconnect safety device.
Speaker 3:
A chamber-loaded indicator is a little thing that sticks up when there's a bullet in the chamber and tells you it warns you that there's still a bullet in the chamber chamber and tells you, warns you, that there's still a bullet in the chamber.
Speaker 3:
A magazine disconnect safety device prevents the gun from firing when the magazine has been removed because people think, oh, I've taken away the device that feeds bullets into the gun. I must have unloaded it, but there may still be a bullet in the chamber, and so sometimes people pull the trigger thinking it's unloaded but it isn't, and that saved many lives. So you know, these laws helped reduce unintentional gun death by two-thirds in California, according to the CDC data, and when those safer guns were sold in the rest of the country by the gun industry, the rate of unintentional gun deaths declined there as well. So in the early 90s there were 500 unintentional gun deaths nationally. So that's a difference of about a thousand, now that the counting of unintentional gun deaths is not very accurate, but clearly many, many gun deaths, unintentional gun deaths, were prevented by these laws.
Speaker 2:
So that I think to to me and to us, that's very important and great success story ultimately it's an incredible success story and it's huge, especially um just to know, as you said, there's so many. It took so much um for you to kind of stay in this fight and you would be totally blank, not blamed if you didn't want to. Um, and obviously you know the title of the book is who killed kenzo?
Speaker 2:
and I think to jj's point. You really broaden the narrative in a way that many people would say, oh, the answer is obvious, but then you ultimately say that it was the shooter, it was the shooter's father, it was the gun industry, it was congress, and you even include yourself in some way and I'm wondering if, possibly, you could walk us through how you came to include each of those entities and what we can learn from it, or what you're hoping the reader will take away from you answering who killed Kenzo in the way that you did.
Speaker 3:
Well, the you know, let's go through those. The father stored his gun where his son could get it. He stored it loaded and he stored it with a bullet in the chamber and he failed to train his son adequately. So those are horrible mistakes. His son had learned some things and been told not to touch the gun for one, yet he went down and got it um and um. He he had learned some enough about guns to know how to remove the magazine and bring it back and he had been told a few things. But he was playing with a gun which he shouldn't have been doing. So in their trial testimony they both, you know, admitted that they had made horrible mistakes.
Speaker 3:
The gun maker, beretta, had sold the gun to civilians that lacked the safety features it should have had for civilians. They never tested it to see how it worked in civilian homes, but it didn't work well in civilian homes. You know, many people were dying in unintentional gun deaths. Many people were dying in unintentional gun deaths. And they just kept blaming the you know, each time blaming the shooter. They were much like the auto industry which used to blame the driver every time an accident happened. But similar kinds of accidents happen over and over and over. There is foreseeable. These accidents are foreseeable. Something can be done about it.
Speaker 3:
Even if the driver or the gun user is doing something wrong, there can be a product change that 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 belts and so forth, the number of deaths per mile driven dropped by 80%. But we don't have those kinds of standards on firearms. A car has, you know, a lock. On the door you need a key and then on the ignition to start up the car you need a key and that's so that unauthorized people, including minors, cannot get in and drive the car.
Speaker 3:
We and you need a license and you need a lot of training. You don't have that in cars and we need some regulation of cars. There's an agency that regulates cars. You don't have that on guns, excuse me. So we need better regulation. We also need a change in culture around guns, including safe storage and Brady and family fire is a high. I highly recommend it and I go go around and tell people about in family fire frequently. I think it's very valuable. It's a wonderful set of activities and, you know, learning tools.
Speaker 1:
Well, and I appreciate kind of how you mentioned and it's it's funny because in the book you even mentioned in kind of a first conversation with John Lowy, who eventually became VP of legal at Brady, the fear that maybe you both had when they started to standardize seatbelts of driving over a bridge, that I'm going to have to unlock my seatbelt every time I drove over a bridge, which is something I'm of a generation that grew up with. That was a norm that you must wear your seatbelt. It was unheard of that. You didn't and so I've. I'd never heard that before of people being afraid of wearing their seatbelts over over a bridge. And so I think when you mentioned repeatedly that the vehicle manufacturer, the car manufacturer, responsibility and norm change that happened there, that is mentioned throughout the book anecdotally and otherwise I think is so important because I think it points to the norm change that things like Brady's program of end family fire or normalizing safe storage, why that's so important but why you know it takes a culture change, takes a lot to do.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, exactly, people are resistant to change and you know there's good reason often to be skeptical. But something like this that repeatedly ends in injury or death, you better take a look at what can be done about it. And instead the gun industry and lobbyists go to Congress and they block every kind of gun safety bill that they can that comes up and that's dangerous for all of us.
Speaker 1:
But I'm actually going to end by quoting John Lowy and then asking you perhaps an unfair question, but it's it's moderators' privilege guess or or control. They can't take the zoom from me. Um so John Lowy, and his closing remarks during the very first trial, said quote. I would say to you, the reason we have the law, as it is, about a product maker's duty to do what it can to prevent foreseeable injuries caused by foreseeable misuse, is because there are Cliffords all around this country there were before Kenzo died and there are today and there are marks in those households across the country.
Speaker 1:
The Berettas of this world know that if, every time this happens, they can escape their responsibility by putting it off on the Cliffords and the marks, there will be no change, there will be no more safety and there will always be more Kenzo Dix's. And despite you then losing the case overall against Beretta, you continue to fight in this ongoing battle. Ongoing battle is the subtitle of your book, and I'm wondering for you then, in kind of, in a world where there is no more misuse, maybe there are no more Clifford's and Mark's, and then there certainly are no more killings of Kenzo's, what would be a finished battle for you? What would that look like for you to be able to say the battle's done?
Speaker 3:
I don't think this battle is is done by any means, unfortunately is done by any means, unfortunately. In fact, in the US, our whole system gives an extra benefit to states with small populations, in rural states, and that means with small populations in rural states, and that means people who want good gun laws have to be very active. I mean, there are many people, many gun owners, who want strong gun laws. For example, they don't want violent criminals to be able to easily obtain guns. And yet, you know, unfortunately, the modern, many modern legislators who take money from the gun lobby won't pass those safety bills, such as requiring background checks on every gun sale. And you know now they've made AR-15s that are so much more powerful and dangerous than the guns we used to have. So I was just listening to one of your podcasts with Mr Joy from North Carolina.
Speaker 3:
Yes, David Joy joy from north carolina, yes, david joy. Um, and you know I, I, my father, was from virginia and when I got was about 12, he bought me a single shot, um, you know, rifle and took me hunting a little. But he was very much for safety and so anyway, we're at great risk and greater and greater risk. The leading cause of death, as you know, of people under 20 is a gun, guns. So we have a long way to go, but and we have reduced rates of unintentional gun death greatly and that's a great, great progress in that particular type of gun death.
Speaker 1:
I want to thank you so much, griffin, again for this talk, for coming on, for your book, for sharing Kenzo with us, and I thought that perhaps one of the best ways that we could possibly close out this gathering is by quoting a poem that Kenzo wrote that you cite within the text, if that would be all right, and so I'm going to try to read this with all together at once, but I think it's just a really good reminder that when we're talking about the people that we've lost in this, that we've lost some really amazing people, that when we're talking about the people that we've lost in this, that we've lost some really amazing people.
Speaker 1:
And so this is something that Kenzo wrote for a high school English assignment entitled I Believe. I believe in the mind and its unknown wonders, the lifelong friendship, the drive to the basket, the importance of humor, the midnight snack, but I don't believe in the economy and working only for the money. I believe in seizing the day, I believe in a good night's sleep, I believe in relaxation and meditation and I believe in random, sibling, playful fights that bring people closer and the importance of sister and brotherhood and family and throughout life. So thank you for sharing very, very much. What a wonderful, wonderful son you had, perfect.
Speaker 3:
Thank you very much All right, thank you all.
Speaker 1:
With that love to you all. Thanks so much. Thank you for being in this fight.
Speaker 3:
Thank you.
Speaker 2:
Good night.
Speaker 1:
Hey want to share with the podcast. Listeners can now get in touch with us here at Red Blue Brady via phone or text message. Simply call or text us at 480-744-3452 with your thoughts. Questions concerns ideas, cat pictures, whatever.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for listening. As always, brady's lifesaving work in Congress, the courts and communities across the country is made possible thanks to you. For more information on Brady or how to get involved in the fight against gun violence, please like and subscribe to the podcast. Get in touch with us at BradyUnitedorg or on social at BradyBuzz. Be brave and remember. Take action, not science.
