Should We See the Damage Done By Assault Weapons?
Should the gun-safety movement have its own Mamie Till? She showed the world the horror of the 1955 murder of her 14-year-old son, Emmett, for whistling at a white woman. The Chicago boy visiting relatives in Mississippi was tortured, shot, wrapped in barbed wire attached to a 75-pound fan, and then thrown in a river. His body was so beaten, torn, and bloated that the only thing that identified him was a ring. Mamie Till, an educator and community activist, insisted on an open casket for the 50,000 funeral mourners and the media. “I wanted the world to see what they did to my boy,” she said. The acquittal of two white men after an hour of deliberations shocked the world. Several months later, Look magazine published their confessions. It took 60 years for the woman to admit she had lied about the boy grabbing her waist and saying crude things.
Yet, the mother’s decision provided a wake-up call to the barbarism of lynching and the unfairness of the legal system. It also provided momentum for the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began a few months later and became a key victory in the Civil Rights Movement.Just as with racial violence at that time, too few people understand the overkill of the military-style rifles many states now permit as casual accessories. Maybe if more knew just how much “assault” these weapons actually inflict, there would be more support for restricting their sale. There have been at least 579 mass shootings in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archives. Bullets from automatic rifles, which are most often used, can liquefy organs because of higher projectile speeds, rapid firing, and large exit holes. That’s more violence than necessary for general protection.
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