Note: while most of the work I put out there is suitable for most age groups, this one contains some graphic descriptions of forensics and a few ear muff worthy words. Please keep this in mind if talking about this with children.
And yes, I know I am supposed to be on a break. I get it. And I was. For four hours. Then nearly two dozen people were brutally murdered by yet another maniac with access to a weapon of war in Maine.
Break paused due to rage.
Thanks,
-ROC
Yesterday, Wednesday, October 25th, an unspeakable horror befell the good people of Lewiston, Maine when allegedly, 40 year-old Robert Card went on a vicious rampage killing at least 18 human beings and wounding an estimated 13 others. It is only today we have more specificity. In this case, a person with one gun was able to create so much carnage, that for a while, the count was in doubt.
That is a war-like situation, where we can only rely on estimates of casualties, due to the sheer volume of damage and inability to identify victims. This next part, might be hard to read, so if you find yourself somewhat averse to graphic descriptions, scroll down past the arrow to the heart and avoid the next section.
For those of you wanting to explore further, what I want to highlight is this: Pieces of human beings take time to reassemble, and identify. In other words, we often can’t immediately know the amount of victims when a gun designed for warfare is unleashed on an unsuspecting public. We can’t know, because in some cases the bodies have been so thoroughly eviscerated that the scene is just a pool of human tissue.
In these situations, we have to rely on modern forensics such as dental records, in combination with missing persons reports.
Growing up, most of us probably watched cowboy films where bad guys took bullets and dramatically acted out their character’s last moments, with perhaps, a smudge of blood prop. That is not the world that is destroyed by an AR-15. That gun is a tree shredder with gunpowder. It is a literal cheese grater with human flesh in place of the cheese. (I told you this would be graphic.) I don’t know what else to do but throw in a quote from a Coroner in Uvalde, TX.
Eulalio "Lalo" Diaz, Jr. isn't always on call, but it was his turn to be at the helm as Uvalde's Justice of the Peace on the day a gunman massacred 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in the deadliest school shooting in state history. The county is so small that the justice on call also acts as Uvalde's de facto coroner.
The case was so grisly, and so unlike anything he'd ever had to face, that it required extra help from the Bexar County Medical Examiner in San Antonio. (Up until last Tuesday, Diaz said the incident with the most casualties that he had ever dealt with was when an 18-wheeler hit and killed a family of four a few years ago).
Diaz did not describe the scene in detail. Instead, he said, "It's something you never want to see and it's something you don't, you cannot, prepare for. It's a picture that's going to stay in my head forever, and that's where I'd like for it to stay."
The AR-15, or “Armalite Rifle” is well-known for its propensity to shatter flesh and bone. In some cases, the damage it can leave behind is compared to a grenade going off from within the body.
For those of you that scrolled through, the descriptions have concluded. What stands out in recent years is the sheer amount of children giving haunting interviews about their experiences. It is fair to say that such an experience brings an end to their childhood, and catapults them, in disorientating fashion, into adulthood. Thus the next section could be fairly titled,
The "We Could Make A Documentary From Child Victim Interviews Alone" Stage of American Gun Violence.
From an account by a 10 year-old in Lewiston.
Little Zoey clearly sees herself as an adult now.
Mother Meghan Hutchinson said, "When I turned around, I saw the shooter. ... I don't know if that was just a warning shot or if he shot somebody with that [bullet]."
Her daughter, Zoey Levesque, 10, was grazed by a bullet.
"It's just like, shocking," she said. "I never thought I'd grow up and get a bullet in my leg," she said. "Like, why do people do this? I was more worried about, like, am I going to live and going to make it out of here? Like, what's going to happen? Are the cops going to come?"
I don’t know what to do for that child. I don’t have the training or even, the perspective to begin to advise on how to put the pieces of that little girl’s psyche back together. Any ideas?
I have some ideas as to how to drive the point home about the toll of this situation. What we could do is establish a memorial for victims of gun violence, and children could get their own section. I say that because the number one cause of childhood mortality is not poverty, it is gun violence. It is not leukemia, it is gun violence.
Firearms accounted for nearly 19% of childhood deaths (ages 1-18) in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wonder database. Nearly 3,600 children died in gun-related incidents that year. That’s about five children lost for every 100,000 children in the United States. In no other comparable country are firearms within the top four causes of mortality among children, according to a KFF analysis.
More children in our nation are dying at a clip yearly, than the number of lives lost on 9-11. Put another way, this is the mortality equivalent of 1.2 9-11’s in children alone, each year, because the guns were deemed by the right wing to be more valuable.
And the ones that are surviving are put through such emotionally scarring experiences that their lives will forever be altered. We used to care about children right?
But back to the memorial. What could this wall say? How about,
“The Children Who Have Died So You Can Have Your Freedom to Play Toy Soldier Memorial.”
That might work.
But nothing has so far.
Oh sure the Republicans will send thoughts.
But I am all out of “Fucks to Give” for their thoughts.
I looked online, too.
Couldn’t find them anywhere. Apparently the whole world is all out of Fucks.
Must be a supply chain issue.
-ROC
If you like my work you can support me at The Claw News Patreon.
If you or someone you know has been traumatized by gun violence, BradyUnited.org has a list of resources that may be able to help.
Love,
ROC
