The Mother Who Wants Politicians to See Photos of Her Child’s Bullet-Riddled Body

[frizzled]

Source: The Trace

Scattered among the crowd at a gun violence prevention rally in Washington, D.C. last month were family members of shooting victims clutching photos of their loved ones. One grieving mother, Nardyne Jefferies, stood off to the side holding up an 8½-by-11-inch full-color photograph of her 16-year-old daughter, Brishell Jones, who was fatally shot on South Capitol Street on March 30, 2010. This image was different: It was an autopsy picture, showing Jones’s flesh split below the collarbone, peeled back to reveal bone and muscle. Jones was killed by bullets from an AK-47 as a group of young men opened fire on a Washington, D.C. crowd in retaliation for an earlier murder over a lost fake-diamond bracelet.

Jefferies has hoisted the grim image aloft at city council meetings and sit-downs with lawmakers and watched as they turned their heads. She’s shown it to reporters who decline to include it in their stories. Jefferies says she’ll put the photo on a T-shirt if it means jolting the American public into action.

“I just can’t see myself talking about gun violence without showing what gun violence is,” Jefferies, 45, tells The Trace. “This image is burned into my memory bank. It doesn’t make sense for me to keep showing pictures of what she looked like before.”

Read more: http://www.thetrace.org/2015/10/gunshot-victim-photos-nardyne-jeffries/

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. Anti-reproductivechoice protesters have established the legal precedence for these kinds of displays

[frizzled]

3. The Gun Control Movement Needs Its Own Pro-Life Fanatics

http://gawker.com/the-gun-control-movement-needs-its-own-pro-life-fanatic-1734711064

[duhneece]

19. Emmet Till just that name

[forest444]

2. And when she asks the Rethug congresscritters how they sleep at night,

They'll tell her: "Like a baby - and if I can't, the NRA sends me two hookers."

[irisblue]

4. She is a brave woman. I support her choice

tell the truth, shame the devil?

[Igel]

14. Ban autopsies.

And blame the those that provide the weapons instead of the murderers who decided that the jewelry was worth more than a life.

I don't think I'd want to see an autopsy picture of a loved one. One thing to see somebody shot. Another to see them splayed open and filleted. (Some will assume that the bodily damage resulting from the autopsy was the result of bullets, no doubt.)

If the murder rates were the same, there'd be a lot fewer deaths, too. But that's the wrong devil. That particular devil has to be gussied up in white whenever paraded in public because it's too embarrassing.

[irisblue]

15. no. baning autopsies is a major scientific mistake

we have learned so much over the millennial from the dead. they have much to tell us. This woman is the murder victims mother, her choice to share what bullets did to her child is her call. While I can respect your choice to not see autopsies, for near 2500 years we have been looking at the dead to learn for the living.

[gregcrawford]

30. Excuse me?

Banning autopsies would be ridiculous and would accomplish precisely nothing.

"And blame the [sic] those that provide the weapons INSTEAD of the murderers..."?!!? You can't possibly be serious.

"If the murder rates were the same, there'd be a lot fewer deaths, too." That doesn't even make sense!

Did you have maybe one too many sips from that Mason jar of moonshine? Hey. Been there, done that, and regretted it.

Edit thyself.

[greatlaurel]

5. Nardyne Jeffries is as brave woman who is working to save everyones children.

I salute this great woman. The loss of this woman's child and all the other children is a tragedy of immeasurable proportions for our society.


Thank you, Nardyne Jeffries.

[mountain grammy]

6. Courageous woman.

[bonniebgood]

7. I remember i posted right after Newtown the parent should

have shown the pictures of those babies dead bodies, had they done so, NRA would have ended 2 years ago..

[Old Crow]

17. I agree with you.

I watched a video from Australia showing the victims of the Port Arthur massacre. They bodies were shown just as the police found them. Women, men, grandparents, children... all slumped over inside a cafe or beside their cars, some face down in pools of blood, others staring at the ceiling or sky, mouths agape. Beside them: plates of food they were carrying to a table, handbags, backpacks, toys.

You see images like that and you don't forget them. You also understand, viscerally, that military-style weapons need to be carefully regulated.

[Locrian]

29. but...

But on the teevee, it's all so clean. Bang, bang, pew, pew and the bad guys fall down - almost always the bad guys, unless it's that "tragic" scene that gives the hero a license to kill.

Nobody shows the way someone screams for help, for their mommy - nobody shows the fear and agony as they lay there knowing they're going to die.

Nobody shows the aftermath and sickness that the family members go thru for the rest of their lives.


Oh, and double that for all the wars that are sanitized and packaged as good vs evil.

[Fred Sanders]

23. One image....it could destroy the NRA tomorrow....we have to do it, painful as it would be.

[smirkymonkey]

8. I dare Ben Carson to tell her...

"...I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away." Go ahead Ben, you disgusting excuse of a human being.

[surrealAmerican]

9. This is heartbreaking.

I can hardly imagine how strong this woman must be.

[jtuck004]

10. “I just can’t see myself talking about gun violence without showing what gun violence is" < Smart,

tough woman.

Alinsky said the first job of change is not always to organize. Things are organized already. Against you.

In this case we have a society that is very used to talking "about" gun violence without seeing it. She is doing what needs to be done to disorganize things.

Gonna need a lot more of her. We will see what happens from here...

[lobodons]

11. Publish pics of the the 21 First graders bodies

that were riddled by bullets!!!!! Fuck the NRA!!!!!!!

[LonePirate]

12. She is a true American hero. She has more courage and strength than any gun nutter.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

13. This is just like Emmett Till.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Thank you, frizzled. Welcome to D.U. n/t

[frizzled]

28. Thank you. nt

[TexasProgresive]

18. A brave woman in the footsteps of Emmett Till's mother

The Face of Emmett Till (UPDATED)
So I lived in southern Mississippi. Emmett Till, this 14-year old black boy, who'd gone to Tallahatchie County, Money, Mississippi in the Delta, to visit his great uncle for summer holiday, from Chicago, was lynched. And as a child of 12, I can not remember having felt more vulnerable, more frightened, more--but at the same time more angry. And I can remember my 12-year old anger very, very much.

And when I met people like Judy and SNCC in 1962, '63, all of us remembered the photograph of Emmett Till's face, lying in the coffin, on the cover of Jet Magazine. [...] And when I met Mrs. Mamie Bradley, Emmett Till's mother, many years later, I asked her, "Why did you not have the undertaker do some cosmetic work on his face?" And her response was that, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby."

If you follow the link you will see the horrible picture of Emmett in his coffin.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/05/14/731205/-The-Face-of-Emmett-Till-UPDATED

[WillyT]

20. HUGE K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[MisterP]

21. the body, dead or alive, is a powerful witness: torture victims bare their backs

to show constellations of casually-applied burns, of the flesh peeled back to the bone, of electricity applied wherever it could be while blindfolded on the parrilla (a new sort of Crucifix for a new sort of political prisoner)

the mutilated preschoolers lying like cordwood would put every braying asshole bragging that no Demmycrat will take his toys on QUITE a defensive

the phones ringing and ringing at the suddenly-swamped Montgomery County coroner's rooms will reveal the yellow on both sides of the underwear of the distinguished elders and plastic cowboys at Richmond

and they keep on ringing

[Fred Sanders]

22. The now iconic image of one 8 year old Syrian boy on a beach jolted the conscience of the world.

Every time I hear "Sandy Hook" the imagined images of the physical horror of the aftermath saddens and maddens me.

Folks need to know what one gun can do....folks need to know what evil tools guns are and the evil is in the aftermath.

Deformed fetuses are freely shown by the RW, so I say what guns do to the fully formed fetuses, our children, should be shown as well.

[Still In Wisconsin]

24. That picture just makes me cry. Every single time.

I have a teenage daughter. I can't imagine the pain- or this mom's bravery. Her daughter was beautiful and thanks to a full auto rifle, she has this image to remember. Every damn member of congress should have to look at this. THIS is the product of our gun culture: a beautiful young girl lying on a slab in a morgue with her body ripped open. How is this honoring God's creation? How is this respecting life? The NRA is indefensible. Screw political expediency- I'll admit it, I want to take their god damned guns.

[niyad]

25. such a brave woman.

[packman]

26. Heart felt thanks for what she is doing

bravery, courage and such grief. Bless her and her departed child. Damn this senseless gun culture.

[Mnemosyne]

27. KnR nt