Gun Violence: To Speed Our Snail's Pace Progress, We Need To See

Very often, the wheels of progress turn slowly, with gains coming in small pieces rather than large chunks.  Regretably, this seems to be the case for common-sense gun legislation.  In the wake of the Sandy Hook slaughter, there are, incredibly, not enough votes in the U.S. Senate to pass Sen. Diane Feinstein's bill to reinstate an assault weapons ban.

Majority leader Harry Reid said there are 40 votes for it.  None, of course, are among the 45 Republicans.  But Reid's count means there are also 15 Democrats who oppose an assault weapons ban.  Reid himself is one of them.

Shame on all these chicken-shit, sell-out Senators who pretend to look in the other direction!  Little children are blown to bits by machine guns, but that's the price we have to pay for our goddam precious 2nd Amendment "rights"?  These thumb-twiddling Senators have mush between their ears and blood on the hands.

But progress is progress, however slow and frustrating.  The prospects still look good for universal background checks and improved anti-gun-trafficking efforts.  Small steps, but we'll take 'em . . . for now, but not for long.  We've got to do more, we've got to do better, and we've got to do it sooner, not later.


(What follows is paraphrased and inspired by a recent article written by filmmaker Michael Moore.  It appeared in the Huffington Post.)


At the end of World War II, General Eisenhower ordered thousands of German civilians to walk through the numerous concentration camps that so many of them claimed did not exist.  Eisenhower knew they needed to see.

In America in the 1960's and 1970's, beyond all the printed and spoken words, there were nationally published photos of young Emmett Till's mutilated body, of lynchings, of civil rights protestors beaten and attacked by dogs, of all the terrible realities of the Viet Nam War.

The images were god-awful, but as Emmett Till's mother said, we needed to see.  It sunk in.  The horror became less abstract, more tangible, and as a nation, we acted.

So far, none of us in the general public has seen a single crime scene/forensic photo from Columbine, or Virginia Tech, or Aurora, or Newtown.  But such photos exist, in police and coroners files.  Similar photos will exist after the next gun massacre, and the next, and the next, and the next.

But one of these days, a parent or a cop or a doctor will decide that we need to see.  They'll release photos to show us the immediate aftermath of an AR-15 attack in a school or a theater, photos to show us what a little kid's body looks like after being hit with high-velocity rounds from an assault rifle.

The images will be sickening, horrific.  I hope we don't look away (like too many Senators are doing right now), because we need to see.

When at last we really see, then we'll also see the 2nd Amendment for what it really is, and not for the NRA perversion we've allowed it to become.