Joseph Sabino Mistick: Facing the truth about our dead children

When 14-year-old Emmett Till was savagely beaten and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after rumors spread that he had whistled at a white woman, his death would have been little noticed but for his mother’s decision to show the world what had been done to her son.

Mamie Till Mobley insisted on an open casket, and photos of Emmett’s mangled body were seen nationwide.

“I said I want the world to see this because there is no way I could tell this story and give them the visual picture of what my son looked like,” Mobley said.

“I saw his tongue had been choked out and it was lying down on his chin,” Mobley later told filmmaker Keith Beauchamp. “This eye was out, and it was lying about midway down the cheek. I discovered a hole. And I said, ‘Well, was it necessary to shoot him?’ ”

Christopher Benson, who co-wrote Mobley’s autobiography, told Smithsonian Magazine, “Mamie opened that casket and opened our eyes. We could never turn away again from our responsibility. Everyone had to be accountable: everyone who had committed acts of racial violence, everyone who had stood by to let it happen. She made sure that, for an entire nation, there no longer could be any innocent bystanders.”

Sometimes we have to face the horror of things before we understand the urgency to act. The Washington Post took a step in that direction on Monday when it published the graphic details of deaths caused by AR-15s — the weapon used in 10 of the 17 most deadly mass shootings in the United States since 2012. The story includes graphic autopsy details of two children — 6-year-old Noah Posner and 15-year-old Peter Wang. Both were slaughtered by AR-15-wielding killers.

Noah was shot three times at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, and Peter was shot 13 times at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. Their parents agreed to let the world see what this weapon did to their babies.

Using computerized graphics to duplicate the autopsy findings, we see how the rounds from an assault weapon disintegrate after entering a body. As a trauma surgeon described it, “That energy is so massive it has to go someplace, and your body will literally tear apart.”

As the Post described Peter’s wounds, “The combined energy of those bullets created exit wounds so ‘gaping’ that the autopsy described his head as ‘deformed.’ Blood and brain splatter were found on his upper body and the walls. That degree of destruction, according to medical experts, is possible only with a high-velocity weapon.”

Hours after the Post story appeared, another mass slaughter occurred at The Covenant School in Nashville. Six people were torn to bits, including three 9-year-old students, by an assailant with assault weapons. Two days later, in an act of textbook terrorism, calls about fake school shootings were made to police across Pennsylvania and across the nation, playing on our jangled nerves.

The Post story is a hard read, but a necessary read. Members of Congress who wear AR-15-shaped lapel pins to show their support for easy access to assault-style weapons should be made to read the story to their own children and grandchildren. Not the whole thing, just the graphic details about how the little bodies of other people’s kids have been blown apart by those weapons. Then we will see where we stand.