LETTERS: It’s time to see the reality of mass shootings

Editor: This has been an emotionally draining week. As a former teacher, school counselor and a saddened citizen of our country, I was devastated to hear the news about another school shooting. Unfortunately, I believe these abominations will not stop until we recognize the reality of what they create.

To fully acknowledge the devastation of these all too often occurrences, we don’t need to see pictures of crying families, police cars or perpetrators’ Instagram posts. What we need to see are the actual crime scene photos. Pictures of mutilated children’s bodies that will penetrate deep inside with immense pain to where the shards of our broken hearts are already tearing at us. We need to send 535 copies of these photos to Congress along with our adamant statements that we will no longer tolerate the inaction of a few ignorant politicians whose behaviors indicate the only representation they exist for are those who provide them dollars. Until these senators and representatives have to experience what these families are having to cope with, they will deflect these horrific actions back into the shadows, relegating them to some tangent cause.

There are those who will protest that such provocative actions would violate the privacy of the families affected by these mass murders. This is merely a deflection because these grieving families have already become part of our public narrative without their permission the moment these tragedies take place. The surviving loved ones are the recipients of our “thoughts and prayers” but not of our honest exposure to the gruesome reality each of them knows when identifying the lifeless body of their brutalized child.
Eliminating the manufacture and purchase of automatic weapons is in no way even remotely a limitation on the second amendment, as these weapons of mass destruction did not even exist when the United States Constitution was written. Massive magazines filled with bullets to be used in these high-capacity high power weapons did not exist when the United States Constitution was written. These are military weapons intended to kill enemies, not our fellow citizen.

Thanks to the NRA, it’s lobbyists and it’s money-grubbing sycophants in Congress the choices of a few are continuing to allow these massacres of children to occur in our own country over and over again. It’s time they see the reality their self-center decisions are creating in crystal clear fashion by having to see what the guardians of these victims must view when they came to pick up their child from school. We need to be done with these exclusively self-serving actions and we need to be done with anyone in government who will not act to affect change.

— Carol Gianfrancisco via letters@sentinelcolorado.com