I came across the article “Wrestling With Details of Noah Pozner’s Killing” by accident, and almost couldn’t bear to read it. In it, the author describes her moral battle over printing the graphic details of Noah Pozner’s body, as related to her by Veronique Pozner.
I don’t think you can have a heart and read this article without knowing that assault weapons have got to go. By that logic, I have to conclude that either the leaders of the NRA haven’t read it, or obviously they just don’t have hearts.
I marvel at the strength of Veronique Pozner, not only in being able to bear the burden but also in speaking the truth about it. She gives me hope. After a tragedy such as this we think, how can a parent endure this loss? Pozner’s response to being asked why she chose to view Noah’s body was this: “I owed it to him…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.”
I understand. How could she spend her life not knowing? Mothers can do anything, including the unbearable and unthinkable, when it comes to their children.
But the NRA can not give up their military toys. As a country, we’re used to a kind of greed that is insatiable and ugly. We accept that power companies will keep an iron grip on their coal plants though they are belching a constant stream of toxins that destroy both humans and the planet we live on. Stockbrokers will steal granny’s pension and pat each other on the back while snorting the coke they bought with it. Banks will take federal money intended to create jobs and build themselves monuments to the sky. We know these things to be true, and we just live with them.
But the kind of greed that insists on arming a nation with assault weapons is possibly even more reprehensible than the person who chooses to use these guns on another human being. It is not in fact our constitutional right to own something that has the capacity for killing dozens of civilians at a time. If I was building bombs in my basement, the police would come and clear it out and arrest me. I don’t see how assault weapons are any different.
For further reading, see: Noah Pozner’s Mom Describes Newtown Victim’s Body, And Why We Should All Listen
