John Cougar Menstrual Cramp Issues Forceful Statement About Gun Violence: ‘Show America the Carnage’

[Borg warner]

John Cougar Menstrual Cramp Issues Forceful Statement About Gun Violence: ‘Show America the Carnage’

The rocker demands that news networks "show the American people the dead children."
02/16/2024  Billboard

In the wake of the nation’s 50th mass shooting so far this year, John Mellencamp says enough is enough. The singer issued an urgent statement on Friday (Feb. 16) just days after the killing of a popular Kansas City DJ/radio personality and the wounding of more than 20 people at Wednesday’s parade celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl LVIII win on Sunday.

“Excuse me for saying the obvious truth. I do so out of love for this country and the pain of learning, once again, that children have been killed by gun violence,” the longtime gun control advocate wrote in the note, which did not specifically mention the violence that marred the Chiefs celebration. “If we as a country want to find the collective will within ourselves to change our gun laws, let’s stop playing silly political games. Show the carnage on the news. Show the American people the dead children and others who have been struck down. Show us what guns and bullets can do to the human body.”

A popular Kansas City DJ and radio personality, Lisa Lopez-Galvan, 44, a married mother of two, was killed on Wednesday when unknown assailants opened fire near the end of the parade attended by a reported one million fans. Despite more than 800 officers on site to secure the route, the burst of gunfire killed Lopez-Galvan and injured 22 others, with half the victims under the age of 16.

“The news media needs to be brave enough to let Americans see what slaughtered children look like,” Mellencamp said, echoing the calls from many gun control advocates in the wake of the 2012 slaughter of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, CT and the 2022 murder of 19 students aged 9-11 in Uvalde, TX. Shortly after the latter, the New York Times asked, “Would disseminating graphic images of the results of gun violence jolt the nation’s gridlocked leadership into action?” referring to intransigence from the political right to tighten gun laws to prevent future incidents.

While experts and photo editors struggle with the ethical quandary of whether showing graphic images of children killed by weapons of war — a majority of mass shootings employ military-style assault weapons with large magazines — might seem exploitative, or could move the needle toward tighter gun laws, the media often shies away from showing gory images. In both Uvalde and Sandy Hook, horrific images of the carnage were not released to the public.

The Times noted that other explicit, disturbing images the media has aired from the Holocaust and the Vietnam War to the current war in Ukraine and the 1955 image of a 14-year-old Emmett Till’s brutalized body after two white men beat, shot and dumped his body in a river have prompted public outcry and action.

Mellencamp, 72, said in his note that he recalled the shock and horror the nation felt when images of young soldiers killed in Vietnam began appearing on the nightly news. “When I was a teenager, there was a war in Vietnam,” he wrote. “In the beginning, no one paid much attention to this problem in a foreign land until the media shouldered the responsibility and showed America how our sons were being slaughtered. Once these images were shown on TV, there was overwhelming demand for that war to be ended immediately.”

The musician and father of five children added that as a dad and a human being “with deep empathy for the parents whose children had their lives ended so suddenly and so senselessly: Show America the carnage. I am not being callous, and I know it will be painful to see. But, sad to say, I think it’s the only way to shock America out of its stupor.”

Mellencamp released his 25th album, Orpheus Descending, last year, which included the anti-gun violence track “Hey God.” “Weapons and guns, are they really my rights?/ Laws written a long time ago/ No one could imagine the sight of so many dead on the floor,” he sings on the track, adding, “Hey, God, if you’re still there, would you please come down? We can’t take it anymore.“

The shooting at the Chiefs parade left at least nine children injured, with a spokesperson for Children’s Mercy Hospital telling WBAL that the 11 children being treated there — nine for gunshot wounds — were between 6-15 years old. The city has long struggled with high rates of gun violence, matching a record in 2023 with 182 homicides, most of which involved guns.

In the wake of the Chiefs parade shooting, Democrat Sen. Steve Roberts decried his state as having “some of the loosest gun laws” in the country, while Republican Sen. and gubernatorial candidate Bill Eigel tweeted what has become a consistent refrain from conservative politicians and Second Amendment defenders in the wake of the nation’s near-daily mass shooting incidents.

“To the liberal gun grabbers already trying to use this KC tragedy to push your radical gun control agenda, hear me now: NOT IN MISSOURI,” Eigel tweeted. “One good guy with a gun could have stopped the evil criminals who opened fire on the crowd immediately. Guns don’t kill people. Thugs and criminals kill people.”

[jmohme]

I have never cared to hear the opinions of any performer.  Enough is enough!

[Mrs.Cicero]

Didn't that douchebag just end a concert in the middle because the audience got tired of his anti-Trump ranting?  He's a douche.  And I really laughed at the title of this thread.

[ChuteTheMall]

Did he notice the demographics of the shooters?

[railfancwb]

1 hour ago, Borg warner said:

Show America the carnage. I am not being callous, and I know it will be painful to see. But, sad to say, I think it’s the only way to shock America out of its stupor.”

By all means show the carnage from the 10s of millions of abortions each year if you are really concerned about violent deaths of children. 

[gwalchmai]

I'd make fun of him but it'd be hunting over a baited field.

[ChuteTheMall]

1 hour ago, gwalchmai said:

I'd make fun of him but it'd be hunting over a baited field.

Never stopped me.

 

[Paul53]

Do away with guns, then everybody that's suicidal will find other ways to get suicide by cop. Provide a better way for mental illness to be treated would be ideal, but nobody wants the cost. A lot can be said about the drawbacks of socialized medicine but they tend to have much lower suicide rates by all means. I had the info to back this up but it got lost in changing homes. Maybe a web search after I get some rest.

[ChuteTheMall]

43 minutes ago, Paul53 said:

 A lot can be said about the drawbacks of socialized medicine but they tend to have much lower suicide rates by all means. 

Only because the government death panels kill them first.

[Hook]

He can blow a goat. Shove it up your arse cougar boy. 

[El Spicoli]

Another leftist unAmerican maroon.   He left his own concert after a fan told him to stop talking about politics and to sing his songs.  

[tous]

Few things less relevant and not worthy of attention, much less consideration, than a has-been hippie that never was.

Yeah, the instant that Dan Rather showed a dead American soldier on the evening news, circa 1968, all US troops were withdrawn and Lyndon apologized to the North Vietnamese and gave the Viet Cong $10 billion dollars in reparations, all because John Whatever-Name-He-Was-Using was upset.

Marxists are very good at remembering the lies they tell.

NB  do we imagine that the security personnel hired to keep that ******* safe from the twenty people that show up at  his concerts only carry flowers, kind words and macrame pot holders instead of firearms?

 

[Dukenukem]

Growing up my friend’s dad was a freelance stringer. He took pictures and video mostly at emergency scenes. He has a scrapbook. The stuff they published on the front page in the 60s wouldn’t be allowed anywhere today. He was at one wreck and the cops were like hey kid you want some good ones flash a couple over here and they threw the sheets back. Carload of people got hit by a train. The pictures were published in the Cleveland press. At least one was decapitated. The car was a 50s model Chevy, looked like a bomb went off in it.  So what’s the point? People are going to people, you can’t make money with pictures and videos anymore because everyone does it, and who is anyone to decide what someone sees or owns for weapons?

[tous]

Those of us of a certain age  remember seeing films (yes, young'uns, they'd wheel in a projector into the classroom)  like Blood on the Highway and Highway of Agony in Driver's Ed class.

Very gory and explicit; act the fool in an automobile and this is your fate.

They danged sure made an impression.

No way they would show those films to the snow flakes.

[janice6]

I had my future wife in the car heading across town to a drive in movie.  My route would pass a Great Northern RR station.  As we got to the station, a cop stopped us and told us to go stand with another group of kids our age.

They took us down the tracks a ways, and told us to hold hands.  We stretched from bank to RR tracks, and up the other bank.  Then we walked the tracks towards the depot eventually through the road crossing.

We were told to look for body pieces and yell when we saw one.  Some yelled, all I saw was flesh on the track where the rails didn't fit flush and the gap was fill with flesh.

They had already collected bodies and big pieces, we were just "clean-up".

At that time, we routinely lost classmates in high school to drunk driving and stupid driving.  That particular night resulted in 8 empty desks on Monday.

Everyone was sorry for the dead.  And life went on.

[deputy tom]

And the horse he rode in on. tom.

[El Spicoli]

Respect for the victim?  What's that?  Maybe someone can pull the story but a couple months ago, "gun violence" groups were using AI technology to simulate voices of kids murdered in active shootings on robo calls.

We could lower violent crime by a good margin by taking specific actions but alas, the left considers that too extreme, racist, and bigoted.  The above, not so much.  Besides, how could they raise taxes or control people more if violent predators were stacked and killing each other in prison or buried 6ft in the ground.  

Now one wants to deal with just "violence".  They will slaughter babies in the womb but give stays of execution for murderers.  We call that insanity.

[minderasr]

F JCM right where he breaths.

[gwalchmai]

I agree with him. Publish pics of all those shot-up little black kids and especially the little black shooters. I think we should have been doing it all along. 

[railfancwb]

On 4/17/2024 at 4:51 AM, janice6 said:

At that time, we routinely lost classmates in high school to drunk driving and stupid driving.

Recall the state highway patrol doing a show and tell. They were pulling a trailer which was carrying a mangled car which was pierced be a length of steel guard rail. Forget how many were killed in that mishap or how far the car slid along the guard rail,  but haven’t forgotten seeing the car. 

[Paul53]

On 4/17/2024 at 1:26 AM, tous said:

Those of us of a certain age  remember seeing films (yes, young'uns, they'd wheel in a projector into the classroom)  like Blood on the Highway and Highway of Agony in Driver's Ed class.

Very gory and explicit; act the fool in an automobile and this is your fate.

They danged sure made an impression.

No way they would show those films to the snow flakes.

Those films so impressed me That I started teaching first aid and cpr, became a "Portamedic" (EMT, ambulance driver, trauma junkie, etc.) then RN in er's for over 40 years!

[El Spicoli]

Look, a broken clock is right twice a day.  Melencamp is not necessarily wrong BUT the reason he wants it is wrong.  Anytime you hear someone say "gun violence", you know you are talking with a leftist woke maroon.

[tous]