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M. Trosino's avatar

I understand the emotional impulse behind the idea of showing pictures to the public of the actual physical results of the meeting of a high-velocity bullet with the flesh and bone of a child. It proves the law of physics that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time every time it happens, and does so in a way that is more gruesome than anyone who hasn't seen it for themselves (thank God, I have not) or who has no rudimentary understanding of ballistics, kinetic energy and bullet structure (I do) can ever begin to imagine. And while I have seen the ugliness of gunshot wounds in adults from other types of ammunition from other types of weapons first hand, I shudder at this thought. I can imagine few things that would be more repulsive and disgusting to a normal, average American than this. And I've got a pretty good imagination.

And therein lies the problem. The politicians, and their backers and supporters, who have - and continue - to oppose any attempts at legislation to at least begin to stem the bloodshed and wanton destruction of lives from guns in this country are not exactly 'normal'. They are, truly, deviants. They possess no imagination. But they do possess something the rest of us do not: body armor. And it comes in the form of a heart and conscience wrapped in impenetrable layers of the Kevlar of self-interest, shielded to the extent that I doubt mere pictures would penetrate. I don't even think that if you could magically grab them all by the scruff of the neck and make them walk through the seen of a school massacre such as Sandy Hook, Parkland or now Uvalde while the blood was still wet and the mutilated bodies of children were still on the floor and the smell and taste of incredibly violent death were still in the air that it would make one damned bit of difference to them. For if their hearts and minds are unable to grasp and recognize the simple concept of needlessly dead and gone when it comes to our children, they are dim enough and well-armored enough to resist any effort to get through to them.

This problem, this crime of conscience, must be solved by those of us who do have hearts and minds not protected by the armor of self-interested disinterest and callousness. We must do it without them. And the only way to do that is to replace them in their comfortable positions and offices with people who have both normal hearts and minds and hardworking imaginations. And to hell with whatever partisan 'letter' comes after their name.

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