It can’t be done. But one thing that would settle this gun controversy for good would be if the police published the real images from those classrooms at Sandy Hook. The crime scene photos or, even worse, panoramic video. Two classrooms filled with little kids’ jaws and eyeballs and brains and guts, surrounded by all the things that first-graders bring to school and work on in class. We could play it in an endless loop on CNN, just like the second plane into the Twin Towers from 9/11. Yeah, it would traumatize the shit out of everyone. The whole nation would never stop throwing up and seeking counseling. But, that’s the point. If people would face up to the reality of what happened, there would be no debate at all. Certainly not this:
Republicans immediately rejected the Obama proposals as an attack on the constitutional right to bear arms.
“Nothing the president is proposing would have stopped the massacre at Sandy Hook,” said a statement by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, considered an up-and-coming GOP leader. “President Obama is targeting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens instead of seriously addressing the real underlying causes of such violence.”The powerful National Rifle Association said it would work with Congress to find what it called “real solutions to protecting America’s most valuable asset — our children.”
“Attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation,” the NRA said in a statement. “Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy.”
Obama called accusations that he seeks to violate gun rights untrue, saying opponents seek to wage a campaign of intimidation and fear instead of working with him for needed changes.
Marco Rubio and the NRA management ought to go jump off a high bridge.
Most of us won’t let our minds go to that place, Boo. Those of us who have children don’t dare go to that place. Because to even imagine it is a nightmare we could never wake from.
If it would make a difference, if the freaks in the leadership of the NRA and any politician who supports them would change his mind when they saw that nightmare scene, then I would insist that they see it. But they are so twisted and perverse now, so detached from the reality of what gun violence really is, I doubt that it would affect them. Wayne LaPierre would probably have a secret thrill run down his spine.
It’s unthinkable to me that this is even a real fight we have to make. Sane minds anywhere else in the world cannot comprehend our infatuation with violence, our love affair with guns. It’s an embarrassment and a tragedy. And what’s horrible is that there are so many who are willing to let it happen again and again, who don’t care about the carnage of little bodies blown to bits in that classroom.
That’s the real horror.
I dare to. That’s why I’m so affected by this. You have to be able to push it out of your mind or you’ll go nuts, but I let it enter.
You’re braver than I. When my son was three, he was diagnosed with leukemia. We went through a period when we thought we would lose him. Thankfully, we didn’t. But there were nightmarish days when we considerd what we would write on his headstone.
I cannot know the agony of those parents at Sandy Hook and all of the other shootings that have happened. I’m sickened by the loss of life, the senselessness of it all. But I won’t put myself in that bloody room. I just can’t.
Someone will eventually file a Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit to compel the investigators to release some pictures at some point. I’m not sure they’ll put up a fight. They actually had to see the carnage, and they are no doubt changed forever as a result.
I kind of doubt it. Respect for the survivors precludes it.
The autopsies will be released and the brutality will be exposed.
Last night on the Ed Show he interviewed Noah Posner’s Mom. I believe it was mentioned by him, and not by her, or maybe even later on the LOD show that Mrs. Posner had insisted on an open casket because she wanted everyone, including her Congressperson to view her son’s remains with everything below his nose essentially blow away. So, your suggestion is not necessarily that off point. Those 49 parents must forever live with the memory of horribly their children were gunned down that day. And we all need to be told over and over again how really horrible that massacre was.
Off topic here, but maybe you can help me out. On the Chris Matthews show just a bit ago Chris had Joe Scarborough on, who’s rather rational on gun control. But he’s not on other matters and the first words out of his mouth were about “entitlements” and how the Democrats haven’t passed a budget because their caucus won’t deal with the issue. I hear this all the time from folks on the right. Have we not passed a budget in the last 4 years? Really?
Also that conservative tool, David Gregory, was on the Alex Witt show this morning during the President’s press conference and his first response was to agree with the NRA that an “assault weapons ban” won’t work. Now I get all those blog comments about “Dancin Dave” and his journalistic non-objectivity.
Finally, we must do something to end this meme of cutting “entitlements”. Those are earned benefits they are all talking about. I’ve had enough of it.
Honestly, the people who are dead set against ANY sensible gun legislation wouldn’t believe the photos were real. Nothing gets to these people.
Nothing ever will. You can’t refute a theology.
I think your friend, Connie Schultz, wrote a great piece on this that you linked to on FB.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/connie-schultz/platitudes-won-t-stop-the-guns.html
It was about the funeral of Noah Pozner. She was quoting an interview with his mother. Noah’s mother was explaining why she needed him to have an open casket funeral.
It should haunt us all.
Fixed.
Publishing horrific pictures won’t change a thing.
Not everybody “gets” empathy. Those that aren’t wired for it won’t get there by confronting blood and guts. They expect that … it’s just how life proceeds.
You cannot change how they think, no matter what you do.
We can only hope that empathy is or at least accompanies other traits that favor survival.
Anybody watch the PBS documentaries about the Romans, spreading their charming civilization across Europe as they (first) raped and (then) slaughtered the locals?
Or the ceremonial slaughter of one’s own children, in South American cultures not really all that long ago?
Or more recently, US civil war combat behavior?
Historically speaking, life does not favor the squeamish.
We will continue to push this new way of thinking, that we are all in this together, and that the welfare of the group is essential to the welfare of any individual.
But don’t expect predators, those very fit survivors, to come on board with this anytime soon.
depends on how you read history. In North America, prior to contact, many civilizations existed that were essentially peaceful and spectacularly egalitarian.
And the average lifespan of australian aboriginese prior to contact has been estimated at over 70 years, indicating stability and lack of significant warfare.
People do pretty well in small communities living off the land. When we get more complicated, we have to work harder to remember our roots as human beings and treat each other well. That can be difficult, and the defective minority – the people without a normal capacity for empathy – have more options than ever to make trouble. But it is not true that we are somehow destined to be violent and horrible to each other.
One often hears people mistakenly talk about begging-the-question, when what they mean is makes-one-curious.
This is the real thing:
You claim without evidence that capacity for empathy is “normal”, and that those without it are in the minority.
I’m not talking about psychopaths here, folks that enjoy ritual strangulation, for example.
I’m talking about folks that don’t give a rip what happens to other folks not-in-their-tribe, given a competing, compelling self-interest.
Like voting against spending money to help folks in New Jersey, wiped out by hurricane, because hey, debt and deficit, and because, not-a-resident of New Jersey.
That’s a trivial example.
It’s not a minority attitude.
They sealed the Virginia Tech building until it was sterilized and painted 6 times over. A lot of rooms were locked right up until I graduated, and the massacre happened my freshmen year. I do know people who were in the building at the time; they said it was like your basement flooding during a rainstorm, except with blood.
Mamie Till showed Emmit Till’s body.
why couldn’t it be done with Sandy Hook?
I guess this is the new meme for GOP Repubs to cling to. Besides Rubio, I have seen at least a few more Repubs come out with this talking point. It’s gotta be straight from the NRA.
The NRA has been touting it’s membership numbers as a way to say that they aren’t bothered by POTUS full court press, but then you see that despicable ad invoking the Obama girls and you just have to wonder WTF was the NRA leadership thinking when they released that even as a web ad, that doesnt seem to me to speak of confidence, but of cowardice.
Cowardice…or threat, dogwhistle style.
You only need to show people horrifying truths when it concerns birth certificates.
Also, too, Booman – check your email.
I figured out earlier today that NRA members comprise approximately 1.41.% of the population of this country. And because the organization is run in an extremely undemocratic manner, even a lot of the members don’t support their extreme positions. I think they will soon find out how isolated they really are.
Booman, it seems one mom in some small way agrees with your sentiments. Damn, if you have kids of ur own, I apologize in advance for the excerpt, but it seems mom wants to make sure people pay attention.
noah-pozners-mom-describes-newtown-victims-body-and-why-we-should-all-listen
Firearms are people, my friend. -Mitt Romney
President Obama pens Op-Ed on Gun Control in Conneticut newspaper
President Barack Obama: Now is the time
Except for subject-verb tense in a few places, that op-ed reads as a transcript of what President Obama said in his press conference today.
Hoping for the best with Obama’s statement today, and pleased that we have a start onthe issue. But I disagree that the we in the USA have an infatuation with guns or gun violence, i’d say the culture as a whole promotes a misconception about violence – that it solves something. How many ppl who deplore the Newtown murders have commented that Django unchained is profound or that ZeroDarkthirty is a good movie. Both propose violence as the a constructive response to wrongs, a lone avenger on the side of right. (and ZeroDark30 inaccurately so, to boot) Both ignore the fabric of society. (the army as a collection of loners in Hurt Locker? I don’t think so). Violence should be a last resort not the ready solution it is depicted as. Also I’m a little disappointed in the cliched anti-gun approach on this thread. In rural areas, especially now with the economy the way it is, many rely on hunting to provide food/protein. It’s not a “love of killing animals”.
I find it helpful to see the NRA as a sort of slightly modernized and better funded version of the KKK.
Let’s call them what they are: Murder Inc.
I do not want to see those pictures because I know how their impact would affect me. However, I am all for someone sending the pictures to all Republicans in Congress, who seem to not realize the horror of this shooting–5 and 6 six year olds! What a coward the shooter was. Or, maybe all these Republicans should be sat in a room and forced to look at these pictures and let us see who comes out of that showing without emotion.
Seriously. If congress got to go to some special room to look at photos of Abu Ghraib that weren’t released to the public, then I think anyone thinking about voting against gun safety should have to go into some room and look at the sandy hook photos.
And they’d better hope that their federal health care covers mental health services, cause a lot of them will need some help processing what they’ve seen.
Do not say “taken” or “passed”.
Say “killed by an assault rifle”.
Say “killed by bullets”.
Every time Obama said “passed”, he helped the NRA.
I see your point, but a lot of the families from Newtown were there, and I imagine this was partially a healing event for them, so I can see why the softer words were chosen.