It seems like only yesterday that I was writing an editorial about gun control. Though my most recent writing on the subject was actually about six weeks ago, the topic is still one that results in major dialogue.
During a recent conversation about increased gun violence, some colleagues and I discussed why people are so divided on the issue of gun control. Then we realized that much of it may have to do with the words “gun” and “control.” Perhaps those two words linked together send people into a frenzy and leads some to think what we have all heard, “President Obama wants to take our guns away.”
Perhaps much of the opposition over gun reform is overuse of the word control relative to guns.
For me, I take the words gun control as they are: an effort to control the types of guns Americans own. I do not see anything wrong with controlling the use of assault rifles and other guns generally fit for combat – not the basic protection of someone’s life. It is not about taking our right to bear arms away; the debate however is about taking our right to bear unreasonable arms such as the aforementioned assault rifles.
I recently read an article about 6-year-old Noah Pozner, one of the 20 child victims of the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Conn.
The article offered a perspective that I think the general public sometimes either forgets about or chooses to ignore. From a media perspective, I understand the importance of proving the hard facts and I am of the old school teachings that sensationalism is not true journalism. However, I do believe that there are times when looking at things as they are and not through rose-colored lenses, is a necessity.
While worldwide coverage of the Sandy Hooks shooting was responsible and certainly considerate of the victims and their families; the Toronto Star recently took things a bit further and gave an in-depth account of little Noah’s funeral and his mother Veronique’s decision to have his casket open during the services. All the dead were shot between three and 11 times. Eleven bullets ravaged Noah’s body.
Though painful to read, the piece proved why gun reform is needed. Perhaps after reading a portion of it even the most stringent opponent of gun reform will change their perspective.
Here’s a portion of the piece by Heather Mallick.
You’ll probably remember Noah. He was a happy little guy with beautiful heavily lashed eyes and a cheerful smile. In his coffin, there was a cloth placed over the lower part of his face.
“There was no mouth left,” his mother told the Forward. “His jaw was blown away.”
She put a stone in his right hand, a “clear plastic rock with a white angel inside.” She wanted to put a matching stone in his left hand but he had no left hand to speak of.
Parents of the dead children were advised to identify them from photographs, such was the carnage. But every parent reacts differently. Veronique Pozner did the most difficult thing. She asked to see the body.
“I owed it to him as his mother, the good, the bad and the ugly,” she said. “. . . And as a little boy, you have to go in the ground. If I am going to shut my eyes to that I am not his mother. I had to bear it. I had to do it.”
When the governor of Connecticut arrived, she brought him to see Noah in the open casket. “If there is ever a piece of legislation that comes across his desk, I needed it to be real for him.”
The governor wept.
Veronique’s decision to have an open casket for her son was reminiscent of Mamie Till’s actions in 1955 after her son Emmett was murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Till was kidnapped, severely beaten and had one of his eyes gouged out before he was shot in the head. His captors tied a 70-pound weight to his lifeless body with barbed wire and dumped him in a river.
When Jet magazine published a picture of Emmett in his casket, suddenly more Americans began to pay closer attention to the injustices faced by Blacks in this country. Shortly thereafter, the civil rights movement gained momentum.
Maybe the vivid description of little Noah’s corpse will be a reality check for millions of Americans who think this country’s gun laws as well as our individual access to the deadly weapons are no big deal.
You can email comments to Shannon Williams at shannonw@indyrecorder.com.
