If Americans knew what bullets did to human flesh, they’d support gun control. So perhaps they should be shown in living colour what bullets do to small bodies. A mere description is insufficient for the literal-minded.

Noah Pozner, 6, was one of the 20 child victims in the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14. All the dead were shot between three and 11 times. Tiny Noah took 11 bullets. His mother, Veronique, insisted on an open coffin, Naomi Zeveloff reported in the Jewish Daily Forward.

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. Zeveloff asked her why.

“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.

Death by gun isn’t real to us because we see it only in the movies. We occasionally see photos of human beings as meat, but they are almost always meat belonging to non-white foreigners after a bombing.

Those grieving often don’t share an editor’s delicate sensibilities. Jackie Kennedy, on Air Force One after JFK was shot on Nov. 22, 1963, was asked to change her clothes because the sight of JFK’s blood and brains was upsetting people. She cleaned her face and discarded her pillbox hat, but kept the bloodstained suit on. “Let them see what they’ve done,” she said. Mass shootings had not yet begun.

And what about the case of Emmett Till? Online Reddit readers commented on one obvious link with Noah.

Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, was hideously murdered in 1955 while visiting relatives in Mississippi. Allegedly, he had whistled at a white woman. Till was kidnapped, beaten, had one of his eyes gouged out, was shot in the head and his corpse tied with barbed wire to a 70-pound weight and dumped in a river.

His mother asked for an open coffin. “I want the world to see what they did to my baby,” she said.

The photo was reproduced and Till’s death became a huge news story. Three months later, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus and the civil rights movement

took a leap forward.

In these three cases, we see the difference between “telling” and “showing,” an old concept in literary criticism. Novelists can “show” events and let the reader draw their own conclusions or they can “tell” the reader the plot as it unfolds.

But the literary critic Wayne Booth came up with the concept of the “unreliable narrator.” Can you trust what you are being told? Reporters can tell you that 20 children were shot. But since American gun owners think reporters are unreliable narrators in the first place, perhaps they have to be shown what one man did to Noah because he had, not just one bullet, but a magazine of bullets.

We saw JFK’s skull fly apart. Emmett’s unrecognizable face was on show.

And that’s why Noah’s mother asked the governor to come and see her child’s corpse. He had already been told. He had to see it for himself.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2013/01/22/mallick_why_newtown_victim_noah_pozner_had_an_open_coffin.html



Can you imagine your little 6 year old having their body ripped apart by 11 bullets?

It is unimaginable.

Just imagine if the security that was supposed to be at that school was in place, how many kids may not have died.

Just imagine, it teachers were trained and armed and/or, there was armed security, how many kids may not have died.

Let's pretend, criminals will respect Gun Free Zones.

Just imagine sweeping up bits and pieces of 2, 3, 4, 4, 6 year old kids blown apart by Barry's Drones.
Just google Kids of the Drone and find out.

Hug a drone. F!!k the kids, no?

I am not an advocate of the drones either and it is off topic. Make your own thread about the drones.

Back on topic.

Imagine your six year old ripped apart by 11 bullets at school. Can you?

Imagine your country torn apart and whole families murdered because a facist with an agenda to destroy it brainwashed a bunch of idiots into believing he cares..... while he orders and condones the execution and slaughter of women and children around the world.

Some people just have no brain, much less use it!

You can't save the children with one breath and kill them with another and have any credibility!

Since that isn't a problem...

Ok, and back on topic again....

http://www.ofthedevil.com/66/viewvideo/Child-Casualties-As-a-Result-of-U.S.-Drone-Strikes.html

Make your own drone thread...

Back on topic...

Imagine your six year old torn apart by bullets in their school. Can you?

You can't talk about murdered mutilated children without including ALL of them!

Justify your thoughtless inconciderate act in floating your own agenda!

Go start your own drone thread....

This thread is about children mowed down in their classroom in the US by an automatic weapon and why the coffin was open at the funeral.

Can anyone imagine their six year old cut apart by 11 bullets in their classroom? Can you?

And yes America needs to see what an automatic weapon will do to their children so they can decide if they want one doing it to their children.

America needs to see what idiots and their ideas are doing to the country as a whole!

Idiots and fools stand on the graves of children preaching about violence and how we need to takes away peoples rights and the ability to defend themselves and their families, while excusing the gov't of acts far worse, killing far more.

Those same idiots want that same gov't to have all the guns "to protect them" from the violence that same gov't creates!

Opinions like yours are what's destroying the America that I love!

I have no problem addressing you Willow....I see the point you are trying to make and I am sure there will be many who agree with you and the actions and choices made by Noah's mother....Although I do not agree with her actions it would be inappropriate for me to criticize them...Grief can affect and manifest in many different ways and is probably unique to each individual...To exploit the bullet riddled body of a six year old child is wrong no matter how you slice it...Your OP made me cry too, not for Noah, for the self righteous people who think this type of sensationalism and exploitation is an effective way to accomplish a goal, ANY GOAL.....I'm out of here....

you really are incapable of understanding anything but a liberal view, aren't you? THERE WAS NO AUTOMATIC WEAPONS FIRED THERE... your friend G.W. BUSH outlawed them years ago...

I have seen no evidence to refute my assumption that the kids at Newtown were murdered by agents of the US government to push a political agenda on the American people.

The kids weren't murdered by guns. My guess is that they were murdered by the people who want to take your guns away.

i could entertain that idea more than the leftest views of some on here...

What automatic weapon was used????

Show us a link where any auto-fire weapon was used.

I am addressing the post.

I am following the rules.

Hug a Drone, Gun free zones attract criminals. F!!k the children.

The woman should be angry that all the evidence in the case is being withheld from the public.

Where is that suspect that was sitting in the front seat of the patrol car and later released. MSMBS didn't report much on that one

Again still nothing that is not a gun hugging, f*k the children ideology. And crazy too in some instances....

And so it goes. All sorts of people talking but nobody listening.

And so it goes. All sorts of people talking but nobody listening.

That deserves repeating.