As
of today, April 12, 2013, 3,413 people in the United States have died
from gunshots since the attack that killed 26 people in Newtown, CT (28
if one includes the shooter and his mother).
In the 1960s, Allen Ginsburg penned a poem, some of the text of which ended up in the musical "Hair" as the song "Three Five, Zero, Zero." The song referred to a body count from the Vietnam War (quoting, supposedly, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara making an accounting of how many Viet Cong had been killed in some short period of time). I find it straggering to consider that nearly 3,500 Americans NOT involved in a war have died of gun violence in only four months on our own soil in our own cities and towns. The shot you see here was made on the Mall in Washington, DC today at a makeshift graveyard assembled to draw attention to gun violence and to stimulate some debate in the hall of the US Congress about what can be done legislatively to stem the tide of such violence. I don't wish to get political here, but the sight of 3,413 markers, each representing someone who died from a gun shot -- some of them as victims of the violence of others, some as innocent bystanders, some as a result possibly of violence they initiated while committing crimes and some at their own hands in acts of suicide -- is simply hard to believe. The sight of so many markers is sobbering. Forget whether my image has any power (I'm not sure if I've done justice to the scene), trust my words when I say that such a number is hard to comprehend when one considers that this happened on our own soil and not connected with a battle in a war. That all of these people had friends, loved ones, dependents and other people they touched, the impact multiplies. |  
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