Just as the open casket for Emmett Till's funeral in 1955 was a grisly wake-up call to Americans about the need to seriously tackle civil rights issues in America, so grisly photos of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting crime scene could be a "transformational" moment in the gun control debate. Or so mused Jim Vance of NBC's Washington station WRC-TV the other night, passing on the suggestion he first heard from liberal radio host Joe Madison.
Vance did not outright call on parents of the Newtown massacre to push for release of the crime scene photos, but he came awfully close, suggesting that seeing the damage from AR-15 ammunition in the dead body of 6-year-old looks like might shape the debate. "Like Joe, I am not insisting on taking anybody's gun away, but I too think there might be some value to taking the discussion about this out of our heads, and into our guts," Vance insisted. [see video embed below page break]
"What would happen, if all of us, if we could see what the bullets from that extended clip did to those children. Like Emmett Till's funeral, it could be transformational," Vance concluded.
[More on Vance: NBC Washington's Vance Treats Obama to Softball Interview, July 15, 2011]
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